REPRESSION USA
I. THE REPRESSION
II. RESISTANCE, REMEDIES
I. THE REPRESSION
Arranged roughly in reverse chronological order.
US MONOPOLY CAPITALISM, CORPORATE STATE FASCISM
BILL MOYERS: US AFTER NOV. 2002 ELECTION
GAY LESBIAN RIGHTS
UNCONSTITUTIONAL DETENTION CAMPS
STAR CHAMBER USA 2002
NEWSPAPERS
ASHCROFT'S CAMPS
ASHCROFT'S GUIDELINES
WEB SITES
TWO ESSAYS ON LIBERTY AND SECURITY
TIPS
VIETNAM WAR
TWO BOOKS REISSUED: AGENTS OF REPRESSION, THE COINTELPRO PAPERS, BY CHURCHILL
AND VANDER WALL (SOUTH END P)
CIA AND RUMSFELD
POLICE REPRESSION: PORTLAND, ME; SEATTLE; SAN MATEO
MANUFACTURED CRISES
SPYING ON CITIZENS INCREASES UNDER POINDEXTER
INFORMATION CONTROL, BUSH ADMINISTRATION
FILM CENSORSHIP: THE QUIET AMERICAN
MASS ARRESTS IN CALIFORNIA
HENTOFF
CENSORSHIP ONE DAMAGE OF WAR
II. RESISTANCE, REMEDIES
ACLU
COURTS vs. SECRECY
MASSACHUSETTS CITIES vs. PATRIOT ACT
I. THE REPRESSION
US MONOPOLY CAPITALISM, CORPORATE STATE FASCISM
How to Break the American Trance By Doris Haddock,
AlterNet http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14506 November 8, 2002
The following is a speech given by 92-year-old Doris "Granny D" Haddock, who
walked across the U.S. in 1999-2000 for campaign finance reform. She made this
speech to Citizens for Participation in Political Action in Boston, on Sept.
27, 2002.
I want to begin by congratulating you for all the work you do. I know it is
often frustrating work. You are blessed to be able to see ahead to a world of
cooperation and peace -- a world of justice and sustainable economies and meaningful
democracies. You wonder why others cannot or will not see these things or reach
out for them, and why they in fact oppose the obvious good -- why they take
the part of the oppressor, the blindered war horse. I would like us to take
a few moments to consider why this work is so hard, and what we might do to
move toward our common dreams more rapidly and with greater joy. Some of you
may be old enough to remember the Reagan Administration. Mr. Reagan and those
around him believed in a very new kind of American hero. This new hero was a
business hero -- not the fellow who built up a family furniture store on Main
Street and supported the Little League and the Scouts; this new hero was not
the woman who worked late hours to create a successful travel agency, nor was
this new business hero anything like any of the hard-working Americans who built-up
our middle class, advanced our standard of living and gave us the resources
and leisure for the proper civic life of a democracy, with its leagues and Rotaries
and Lions and Elks and VFWs and party conventions and all that glory. No, the
Reagan business hero was the corporate takeover artist. Any regulations that
might get in the way of these ruthless new capitalists were removed -- removed
so that reptiles of uncommon greed and brutality might rule the earth, which
they now nearly do. What soon happened was that ALL corporations of medium size
or larger had to look over their shoulders. How did a corporation protect itself
in this environment from a hostile takeover? It had to close down any factories
that were not earning obscene profits. Never mind that a factory had served
a town well for a century, or that it provided a healthy and regular profit
for its stockholders. If it seemed to be underperfoming by the new hypergreed
standards, or if it could be closed in favor of opening a foreign plant that
provided a slightly higher rate of return, then, in this new atmosphere, the
company was derelict in its duty to its stockholders if it did not ruthlessly
act. Perfectly good and profitable factories were closed. Benefits to employees
everywhere were attacked, and staffs were downsized, outsourced, computerized,
downsized again, outsourced again to temp agencies that paid no health care
or retirement, and on and on until America became a very different place. The
gap between rich and poor is now wider than at any time in our history. It is
still a wealthy nation for many people, but poverty is on the rise, and those
with jobs find themselves so overworked trying to make ends meet that there
is little time for family or for the joy of living. Indeed, there is very little
joy left in American life. Workers are not loyal to their companies, because
companies treat them like expendable slaves, with no dignity or assurance that
hard work will result in advancement or security. We are living in the harsh
world invented by a handful of corporate raiders whose values were completely
foreign to the fairness and moderation that had so long served as the proper
foundation of American success and the American dream of plenty for all. They
were not a new kind of person, for there have always been among us a few reptilian
hearts of uncommon greed. What was new was the political permission they received
for their rape and rampage, which continues. And so a new world devolved as
if from a virus. The new business hero, a Horatio Alger on crack, did very well.
The new model CEO derived from that moment -- the ruthless mercenary who would
come in to reorganize a company and render it takeover-proof by rendering it
inhumane. This executive was worth millions per year, we were told. In this
way, a Darwinian system of corporate survival assured that the most carnivorous,
rather than the most responsible, would rise to lead our most powerful commercial
organizations. And if you need an explanation for Fox News or Enron, this is
the history you need to remember. These superwealthy predators now, through
their political patronage, control both political parties. They control Congress
and the White House. They control elements within your state house. They are
not particularly smart people, as their current agent in the White House clearly
demonstrates. Here is how the takeover of corporations became the corporate
takeover of American democracy: To get along and move up in one of these right
wing business organizations, you have to be like the boss. The people working
under you will then want to be like you to get along themselves. In Fox News,
even reporters in local regions are told how to slant each story hard to the
right. There is no pretense of journalism within the organization. And many
people stuck in those jobs, who got into journalism with the idea of doing legitimate
journalism, are sick to their stomachs every working day. In this way, the right-wing
leanings of a few people have distorted entire industries, including television
news. Political leaders are quickly infected in this trickle down reptilism
-- trickling down from the people who write the checks for political campaigns
and who control political news. And the reptilism trickles down further, to
the weaker minds listening to talk radio or silly enough to spend too much time
watching cable television news -- people who buy the lies, who are simply suckered
into forking over their own political best interests to the con artists who
attempt to pick their pockets at the same moment they are pointing out others
who, they say, are the real trouble makers. About 25 percent of our people are
susceptible to this kind of con, and they then give us problems by standing
against any reasonable reforms. They have been spiritually twisted by the cheap
poison of a hundred Rush Limbaughs into the angry, unthinking agents of the
superrich. On my long walk across America, a man driving a garbage truck told
me that the biggest problem facing America today was the inheritance tax. I
didn't have to ask him if he had a radio in his truck. I remind you of all this
because it is important to know that the reason our reforms are difficult is
not because Americans are split into two camps, conservative and liberal. It
is not like that at all. There are lots of conservatives and liberals in America,
but we are not the two sides of the divide. True conservatives in our country
don't have many political leaders to look to with respect. Among the last was
Barry Goldwater. He believed that the government had no business in our bedrooms.
He believed that a woman and her doctor didn't need the government's help in
deciding her important issues. He would have laughed and then, I think, become
very, very angry at Ashcroft's attacks on the Bill of Rights and his citizen-against-citizen
snitching system. Goldwater believed that the only issue of importance regarding
gays in the military was whether or not they could shoot straight. What we are
seeing now from the far right is not conservatism at all. It is fascism: the
imposition of a national and worldwide police state to enforce a narrow world
view that enriches and empowers the few at the expense of the many, and that
gives no respect or honor to other cultures, ways of living, or opinions. To
call that conservatism is a crime against the memory of America's great and
true conservatives, who might think that government ought to be less involved
in life than we old liberals would concur with, but who nevertheless stood for
the core American values that today's right-wing leaders undermine at every
opportunity. We Americans are not split into liberals and conservatives. In
fact, if you are running for office from the center, or from left of center,
just do a better job of demonstrating how far right-wing your opponent is, and
you will win more and more votes. You will win them from the vast number of
people, most especially urban women and professional men, who identify themselves
as Republicans for old time's sake, but who are very uncomfortable when forced
to look squarely at the far right positions of many candidates running under
the flag of the Grand Old Party. Given moderate alternatives, they will vote
for them. That was exactly the truth that Clinton understood and exploited so
brilliantly. He understood that Republicans are conservatives but the Republican
Party is not. If you want to reflect upon how well he exploited this insight,
remember that Hillary was a Republican when he met her. If we Americans are
split into two meaningful camps, it is not conservative versus liberal. The
two camps are these: the politically awake and the hypnotized -- hypnotized
by television and other mass media, whose overpaid Svengalis dangle the swinging
medallions of packaged candidates and oft-told lies. It is all done to politically
prolong the open season on us -- open season indeed, as the billionaire takeover
artists bag their catch for the day. And in their bags are our freedoms, our
leisure, our health care futures, our old age security, our family time, our
village life, our family-owned businesses on Main Street, the middle class itself,
and our position of honor and peaceful leadership in the world. Once we understand
what we are up against, and where the meaningful dividing lines truly run, our
lives as reformers can be easier because we shall know how to proceed. How to
break the hypnosis is then the question. It is easy. Pull any contractor out
of his white pickup truck, turn down the talk radio blaring from it, and ask
him, "Government good, or government bad?" His glazed eyes will widen. "Government
bad!" he will say. Ok, good. You found one to play with. Now, ask him what the
town might do to make it safer for kids to get to and from school, and around
town when they're not in school, without getting killed by traffic or getting
in trouble. He will have a million ideas. Good ideas. He has no clue that he
is being government -- if government is what happens when we get together to
solve our common problems and to make life better for our communities. You have
broken his trance. When a proposition is on the ballot, people talk about the
mechanics of the idea, and the hypnosis is largely circumvented. You see quite
progressive ballot propositions passing in otherwise quite unprogressive states.
Why? Because people are problem-solvers at heart, and they enjoy it. They want
to participate and be helpful and accepted as valuable players. It takes a lot
of hypnosis to overcome that instinct, and a lot of hypnosis is what we have
had. But we can get around it. Government agencies, of course, have been the
communitarian's worst enemies. Anything that smacks of bureaucratic rudeness
or pushiness or counterproductive stubbornness does nothing but damage the idea
that government is us -- we the people acting together to solve our problems
as fellow citizens. That brand of government really needs to be stamped out
whenever it shows its pinched, gray face. That is what can be done and must
be done to prepare the ground for what must come next, which is a new engagement
of citizens with the issues of interest to them in their communities. We should
begin in our high schools. During the years from 13 to 19, lifelong civic values
are formed. We should start with our younger people. As community leaders, we
should work with the popular history and civics teachers in our high schools
to bring the issues of the day and the issues of the town into the classroom
-- not to propagandize but to openly invite students to learn, research, and
offer advice to the community on a wide range of issues. This is where the hypnosis
falls apart. This is where democracy finds its feet again. This summer I asked
America's independent community radio stations to get involved with those same
teachers in our high schools, to make students into community reporters and
commentators. I reminded these indy news stations that they have the technology
and the dramatic missions young people crave. I said young people will never
become robots if they are enlisted in the cause of truth at an early age. What
we do in schools, we must also do in colleges and then in the general community.
But if we only have the means to focus on the high schools, that is enough.
These young people will be voting in only a few years. If we support their increased
civic engagement as they move through college and into the community, we will
have raised an army of citizens immunized against corporate hypnosis. Our victories
for needed reforms will come naturally. With an engaged and informed citizenry,
who knows what good we might do, and what great civilization we might yet again
move toward? True conservatives and liberals unite! Bring your issues and your
opinions to our young people, and create a new expectation that they will get
involved, get informed, and form a view of themselves as problem-solving citizens
of a democracy. Our differences from the left or right are nothing compared
to the differences between the politically awake and the hypnotized drones of
the new colonialism that now stalks and shreds our civilization. I urge you
to think young, to link with moderates on the other side of the fence, and to
approach the schools and teachers who can help you connect your young, rising
citizens to the issues that will shape their lives. If you believe that human
beings, in addition to all their other instincts, want to help create and live
in a happy, creative and cooperative world, then you must believe that people
are to be trusted in their politics so long as they are encouraged to study
everyone's experience and study the competing points of view -- and so long
as they are raised with enough love and security to be capable of empathy. We
need not force a liberal agenda on our society, any more than we need force
our political opinions on our children. We can enjoy life instead of banging
our heads against the old walls. If we encourage an awake thoughtfulness, democracy
and justice will have all the victories our hearts can handle. To read more
of Doris Haddock's writings, visit GrannyD.com. Doris Haddock --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Born Doris Rollins: Jan. 24, 1910 in Laconia, New Hampshire USA Widow, two grown
children. Thirteen great grandchildren (soon 15). Attended Emerson College in
Boston for 3 years. Left upon marriage to James Haddock, an Amherst graduate.
Emerson awarded her an honorary degree in 2000. With her husband, Jim, she helped
stop the planned atmospheric testing of hydrogen bombs in Alaska in 1960, saving
a fishing village at Point Hope. After the defeat of Senator McCain and Senator
Feingold's first attempt to remove unregulated "soft" money from campaigns in
1995, she became interested in campaign reform and led a petition movement.
In 1998 she decided to walk across the U.S. to demonstrate her concern for the
issue of campaign reform. She walked around her hometown of Dublin, New Hampshire
for most of 1998 to get in shape for the walk. On Jan. 1, 1999, she began her
walk in Pasadena, California. She walked 10 miles per day for 14 months, arriving
in Washington, D.C. on Feb. 29, 2000. She was hospitalized once, in Arizona,
with dehydration and pneumonia. She walked 3,200 miles. Her route: Pasadena
to Twentynine Palms CA, Parker AZ, Wickenburg, Phoenix, Tucson, Tombstone, Lordsburg
NM, Las Cruces, El Paso TX, Midland, Dallas, Texarkana AK, Little Rock, Memphis
TN, Louisville KY, Cincinnati OH, Parkersburg WV, Morgantown, Cumberland MD,
Washington, D.C. Her hardest miles were climbing the Appalachian Range during
blizzard conditions. She made speeches along her walk, and made an effort to
draw reform groups together. When she arrived in Washington, she was met by
2,200 people, representing a wide variety of reform groups. Several dozen Members
of Congress walked the final miles with her. Pro-reform Capitol Hill staffers
and elected officials credit her with demonstrating that Americans care about
campaign finance reform. She connected the issue with patriotic values in a
way that provided wider popular support for reform. She was instrumental in
moving the issue forward. When presidential candidate Al Gore adopted a campaign
finance reform plank, his speech credited John McCain, Bill Bradley, and Doris
Haddock. During the 2001 McCain-Feingold debate, she walked continuously around
the Capitol building for seven days. During the final three days of debate,
she walked 24 hours a day, stopping only for catnaps and food. This was done
in subfreezing winds and rain. She met with 35 senators during this vigil, representing
to them the feelings of the people she met along the road. She is five-feet
tall. She wore out four sets of shoes on her long walk. When snows between Cumberland,
Maryland and Washington threatened to delay her arrival in February of 2000,
she cross-country skied 100 miles along the old C&O Canal tow path. She has
emphysema and arthritis, both of which improved during the walk.
BILL MOYERS: GOP POST-ELECTION NOVEMBER 2002
Bill Moyers¹ commentary on NOW (11/8/02 8-9 PM on PBS Boston's WGBH 2)
Way back in the 1950's when I first tasted politics and journalism, Republicans
briefly controlled the White House and Congress. With the exception of Joseph
McCarthy and his vicious ilk, they were a reasonable lot, presided over by that
giant war hero, Dwight Eisenhower, who was conservative by temperament and moderate
in the use of power. That brand of Republican is gone. And for the first time
in the memory of anyone alive, the entire federal government ‹ the Congress,
the Executive, the Judiciary ‹ is united behind a right-wing agenda for which
George W. Bush believes he now has a mandate. That mandate includes the power
of the state to force pregnant women to give up control over their own lives.
It includes using the taxing power to transfer wealth from working people to
the rich. It includes giving corporations a free hand to eviscerate the environment
and control the regulatory agencies meant to hold them accountable. And it includes
secrecy on a scale you cannot imagine. Above all, it means judges with a political
agenda appointed for life. If you liked the Supreme Court that put George W.
Bush in the White House, you will swoon over what's coming. And if you like
God in government, get ready for the Rapture. These folks don't even mind you
referring to the GOP as the party of God. Why else would the new House Majority
Leader say that the Almighty is using him to promote 'a Biblical worldview'
in American politics? So it is a heady time in Washington ‹ a heady time for
piety, profits, and military power, all joined at the hip by ideology and money.
Don't forget the money. It came pouring into this election, to both parties,
from corporate America and others who expect the payback. Republicans outraised
democrats by $184 million dollars. And came up with the big prize ‹ monopoly
control of the American government, and the power of the state to turn their
ideology into the law of the land. Quite a bargain at any price. That's it for
this week. For NOW, I'm Bill Moyers. Tell us what you think. (http://www.pbs.org/now/feedback.html)
GAY LESBIAN RIGHTS
News Releases 08/28/2002 Groundbreaking Legal Settlement is First to Recognize
Constitutional Right of Gay and Lesbian Students to be Out at School & Protected
From Harassment Settlement in gay student's lawsuit against Reno school district
mandates sweeping policy changes to end discrimination and harassment in schools;
former student receives $451,000. (San Francisco, Wednesday, August 28, 2002)
-A gay student who sued high school administrators in Reno, Nevada, for failing
to stop anti-gay harassment today signed a settlement agreement that ends the
lawsuit and offers broad new protections that will impact gay and lesbian students
nationwide. The agreement is the first in the country to recognize the constitutional
right of gay and lesbian youth to be open about their sexual orientation in
schools and to be protected from discrimination and harassment by other students.
As a result of the settlement in Henkle v. Gregory, Derek Henkle will be paid
$451,000 in damages, the largest pre-trial award of its kind in the nation.
In addition, the Washoe County School District will immediately implement sweeping
new policies to protect gay and lesbian students from discrimination, including
training all staff on preventing and responding to sexual harassment and intimidation.
Henkle, who endured years of anti-gay verbal and physical abuse in Reno high
schools, was represented jointly by Lambda Legal Defense & Education Fund and
the law firm of O'Melveny & Myers LLP. "The settlement achieves all the objectives
of this lawsuit," according to Peter Obstler, a senior counsel with O'Melveny
& Myers, who acted as lead trial counsel in this case. "First, the monetary
award will go a long way toward helping Derek recover from the years of harassment
he suffered in high school. Second, the settlement fundamentally changes the
way that this school district will protect its students from harassment in the
future. And third, the settlement sends a message to the nation's schools that
the harassment of gay and lesbian students will not be tolerated and that the
failure to respond to that harassment has serious financial consequences for
school districts. Simply put, 'If you bash, you pay.'" "Today's settlement tells
schools across the country that they must allow gay students to be fully out
and must protect them from discrimination," said Jon Davidson, senior counsel
in Lambda Legal's western regional office. "Lesbian and gay students are coming
out at younger ages. This settlement provides the first real blueprint for how
schools can meet their legal obligations as this trend continues. We commend
the Washoe Country School District for setting the example for how schools can
deal with this evolving issue. This settlement raises the bar for other school
districts nationwide in meeting their legal obligations and we hope other districts
will follow Reno's example." "I'm signing this agreement today on behalf of
the 84% of my peers who are assaulted daily while trying to go to school," said
Derek Henkle, now 21 and a resident of San Francisco. "This settlement will
help make sure other students don't go through what I did in Reno. Gay and lesbian
students face hostility from other students, and even from school staff, every
day in schools across the country. I was deprived of my education because of
this, but I'm pleased that this settlement will show other students that they
can fight for their rights to be open and honest about who they are, to be protected
from harassment and abuse, and as a result to have basic access to an education."
Henkle was a victim of violence, bullying, and physical attacks at three different
high schools in the Washoe County School District. At his first high school,
he was called names, shoved against lockers and spit on. A group of boys even
threw a lasso around Henkle's neck and threatened to drag him behind their pick-up
truck. He escaped, only to have a teacher laugh at him for being so upset. He
was transferred to a school for students with behavioral or academic problems
where the principal warned Henkle against "acting like a fag." After Henkle
was transferred to yet a third high school, the harassment continued and school
police officers stood by while a student repeatedly punched Henkle in the face.
He was finally forced to enroll in adult education classes where a high school
diploma was impossible to obtain. The $451,000 being paid to Henkle by the school
district will allow him to continue his education. Henkle who had been in a
program for "gifted and talented" students was forced to abandon his high school
education. As part of the settlement agreement, the school district has placed
a letter in Henkle's academic file that recognizes that the harassment and violence
he suffered affected his academic performance. This letter will be critical
to his being able to gain admission to college. Henkle also plans to use a portion
of the settlement money to fund an educational project that will empower lesbian,
gay, bisexual and transgendered youth to address harassment and violence. Policy
Changes In addition to the financial compensation to Henkle, the Washoe Country
School District agreed in the settlement to sweeping new school board policies
and actions that, among other things: a.. Expressly acknowledge that students'
freedom of expression specifically includes the right to discuss their sexual
orientation and issues related to sexual orientation at school; b.. Require
regular student education about harassment and sexual harassment and intimidation;
c.. Require regular training of all staff regarding the prevention of and proper
response to harassment, sexual harassment and intimidation of students; and
d.. Require posting of the policy and implementing regulations in all district
buildings and include it in student handbooks given annually to families The
Washoe County School District operates 86 schools spread over a county larger
than the state of Delaware and has enrollment of more than 58,000 students who
will be protected by this settlement. The Henkle settlement follows several
other lawsuits against schools that have settled in recent years. In 1996, the
trial of Lambda Legal's landmark case Nabozny v. Podlesny resulted in a jury
finding Wisconsin schools officials liable for not protecting Nabozny. The case
is Henkle v. Gregory in United States District Court, District of Nevada. The
Henkle litigation team was comprised of Jon Davidson, senior counsel at Lambda
Legal, and Michael Tubac, Peter Obstler and Luann Simmons, from the O'Melveny
firm which acted as lead trial counsel. O'Melveny & Meyers represented Henkle
pro bono in this case and contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars of legal
services to Henkle's cause. In addition, O'Melveny and Lambda waived their right
to recover attorneys' fees so that a workable settlement could be achieved in
the case. For additional background on the lawsuit, see the policy changes,
a resource directory on safe school issues, and other litigation on behalf of
gay and lesbian students. For more information on this and other pro bono work
undertaken by O'Melveny & Meyers, go to www.omm.com.
UNCONSTITUTIONAL DETENTION CAMPS
Nat Hentoff | General Ashcroft's Detention Camps, Time to Call for His Resignation
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/09.03A.hentoff.camps.htm
STAR CHAMBER USA 2002
Uncivil liberties Byline: Daniel Schorr Date: 08/30/2002 (WASHINGTON)
In the way that Miranda denotes defendants' rights and Roe denotes abortion
rights, Hamdi may come to denote an enemy's rights. Yaser Esam Hamdi is an American
born in Baton Rouge, La., raised in Saudi Arabia, and captured by Northern Alliance
forces in Afghanistan while serving with the Taliban. After a stay in Guantanamo,
he is now in a Navy brig in Norfolk, Va., designated as an "enemy combatant,"
not charged with anything, and denied legal representation. Federal District
Court Judge Robert Doumar in Norfolk ordered unrestricted access to counsel
for Mr. Hamdi. That was halted by the appeals court, which told the judge to
hear more arguments and get more facts before ruling. When Judge Doumar called
for documents, the Justice Department did not provide many. At a second hearing,
Doumar renewed his order that the government furnish more information to justify
holding Hamdi incommunicado. The order said, "We must protect the freedom of
even those who hate us." The judge offered to review classified information
in secret. The Justice Department, however, gave no sign of receding from its
position that anyone it labels an enemy combatant has no rights and, furthermore,
that the courts have no power to intervene. The government has once again appealed
Doumar's ruling. The Hamdi case asserts a novel separation of powers between
the executive branch and the judiciary that is almost unprecedented. During
the Civil War, the Supreme Court prohibited military detention of noncombatant
Americans without appeal as long as the courts were functioning. But what if
Attorney General John Ashcroft says that, when it comes to enemy combatants,
the Supreme Court has no jurisdiction either? A 1971 law looking back to the
detention of Japanese-Americans without legal recourse during World War II prohibits
the imprisonment of American citizens except pursuant to an act of Congress.
The administration says that law does not apply to enemy combatants. If the
administration can decide on its own who has rights and who does not, who can
have a lawyer and who cannot, who is an enemy and who is not, and further proclaim
that its decision is not subject to judicial review, then that endangers the
very liberties that President Bush says he is trying to defend against the terrorists.
* Daniel Schorr is a senior news analyst at National Public Radio. (c) Copyright
2002 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved. Click here to email
this story to a friend: http://www.csmonitor.com/cgi-bin/send-story?2002/0830/p11s02-cods.txt
The Christian Science Monitor-- an independent daily newspaper providing context
and clarity on national and international news, peoples and cultures, and social
trends. Online at http://www.csmonitor.com Click here to order a free sample
copy of the print edition of the Monitor: http://www.csmonitor.com/aboutus/sample_issue.html
NEWSPAPERS
Streitmatter, Rodger. Voices of Revolution: The Dissident Press in America
(Columbia UP, 2002). Profiles 33 newspapers suffering under various degress
of national and local repression.
ASHCROFT'S CAMPS VS. CONSTITUTION
Camps for Citizens: Ashcroft's Hellish Vision Attorney general shows himself
as a menace to liberty. By JONATHAN TURLEY,
Jonathan Turley is a professor of constitutional law at George Washington University.
Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft's announced desire for camps for U.S. citizens he deems
to be "enemy combatants" has moved him from merely being a political embarrassment
to being a constitutional menace. Ashcroft's plan, disclosed last week but little
publicized, would allow him to order the indefinite incarceration of U.S. citizens
and summarily strip them of their constitutional rights and access to the courts
by declaring them enemy combatants. The proposed camp plan should trigger immediate
congressional hearings and reconsideration of Ashcroft's fitness for this important
office. Whereas Al Qaeda is a threat to the lives of our citizens, Ashcroft
has become a clear and present threat to our liberties. The camp plan was forged
at an optimistic time for Ashcroft's small inner circle, which has been carefully
watching two test cases to see whether this vision could become a reality. The
cases of Jose Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi will determine whether U.S. citizens
can be held without charges and subject to the arbitrary and unchecked authority
of the government. Hamdi has been held without charge even though the facts
of his case are virtually identical to those in the case of John Walker Lindh.
Both Hamdi and Lindh were captured in Afghanistan as foot soldiers in Taliban
units. Yet Lindh was given a lawyer and a trial, while Hamdi rots in a floating
Navy brig in Norfolk, Va. This week, the government refused to comply with a
federal judge who ordered that he be given the underlying evidence justifying
Hamdi's treatment. The Justice Department has insisted that the judge must simply
accept its declaration and cannot interfere with the president's absolute authority
in "a time of war." In Padilla's case, Ashcroft initially claimed that the arrest
stopped a plan to detonate a radioactive bomb in New York or Washington, D.C.
The administration later issued an embarrassing correction that there was no
evidence Padilla was on such a mission. What is clear is that Padilla is an
American citizen and was arrested in the United States--two facts that should
trigger the full application of constitutional rights. Ashcroft hopes to use
his self-made "enemy combatant" stamp for any citizen whom he deems to be part
of a wider terrorist conspiracy. Perhaps because of his discredited claims of
preventing radiological terrorism, aides have indicated that a "high-level committee"
will recommend which citizens are to be stripped of their constitutional rights
and sent to Ashcroft's new camps. Few would have imagined any attorney general
seeking to reestablish such camps for citizens. Of course, Ashcroft is not considering
camps on the order of the internment camps used to incarcerate Japanese American
citizens in World War II. But he can be credited only with thinking smaller;
we have learned from painful experience that unchecked authority, once tasted,
easily becomes insatiable. We are only now getting a full vision of Ashcroft's
America. Some of his predecessors dreamed of creating a great society or a nation
unfettered by racism. Ashcroft seems to dream of a country secured from itself,
neatly contained and controlled by his judgment of loyalty. For more than 200
years, security and liberty have been viewed as coexistent values. Ashcroft
and his aides appear to view this relationship as lineal, where security must
precede liberty. Since the nation will never be entirely safe from terrorism,
liberty has become a mere rhetorical justification for increased security. Ashcroft
is a catalyst for constitutional devolution, encouraging citizens to accept
autocratic rule as their only way of avoiding massive terrorist attacks. His
greatest problem has been preserving a level of panic and fear that would induce
a free people to surrender the rights so dearly won by their ancestors. In "A
Man for All Seasons," Sir Thomas More was confronted by a young lawyer, Will
Roper, who sought his daughter's hand. Roper proclaimed that he would cut down
every law in England to get after the devil. More's response seems almost tailored
for Ashcroft: "And when the last law was down and the devil turned round on
you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? ... This country's
planted thick with laws from coast to coast ... and if you cut them down--and
you are just the man to do it-- do you really think you could stand upright
in the winds that would blow then?" Every generation has had Ropers and Ashcrofts
who view our laws and traditions as mere obstructions rather than protections
in times of peril. But before we allow Ashcroft to denude our own constitutional
landscape, we must take a stand and have the courage to say, "Enough." Every
generation has its test of principle in which people of good faith can no longer
remain silent in the face of authoritarian ambition. If we cannot join together
to fight the abomination of American camps, we have already lost what we are
defending. Copyright 2002 Los Angeles Times
ASHCROFT'S GUIDELINES FOR INVESTIGATING SUSPECTED TERRORISTS
Nat Hentoff, "The Terror of Pre-Crime," The Progressive (Sept.
2002) 16. Worse thatn Hoover's FBI contempt for due process.
WEB SITES
c civil liberties and security The NSA Draws Fire http://www.time.com/time/nation/printout/0,8816,322587,00.html
Domestic Military Role Under Review http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/06/20/politics/printable512881.shtml
Ashcroft's Terrorism Policies Dismay Some Conservatives (the conservative alliance
of libertarians and authoritarians can't last) http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/24/politics/24ASHC.html?pagewanted=print
An Algorithm for Defeating the Computer-Assisted Passenger Screening System
(one more reason why racial profiling is less secure than random screening)
http://swissnet.ai.mit.edu/6805/student-papers/spring02-papers/caps.htm Critical
Infrastructure Protection http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d02474.pdf Home Users
Part of Net Security Plan http://news.findlaw.com/scripts/printer_friendly.pl?page=/ap/ht/1700/7-17-
2002/20020717140016_046.html WebTV Virus Dials 911 (police are not happy) http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/TechTV/techtv_911virus020723.html
Wireless Security Blackpaper http://arstechnica.com/paedia/w/wireless/security-1.html
Security in Pervasive Computing, Boppard, Germany, 12-14 March 2003 http://www.dfki.de/SPC2003/
Fingerprinting of UK School Kids Causes Outcry http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/26305.html
http://www.privacyinternational.org/countries/uk/kidsprint/fingerprint-rel ease-702.html
"our systems maintain databases of tens of millions of finger images" http://www.morpho.com/
http://www.foodserve.com/fprint.htm more on Liberty Alliance's new identity
system spec (does anyone have URL's for privacy and security analyses of it?)
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=74&u=/cmp/20020715/tc_cmp /inw20020715s0008&printer=1
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/cmp/20020715/tc_cmp/inw2002 0715s0007
Exposing Ticket Camera Flaws http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-camera24jul24.st
ory more on "nonlethal weapons" http://www.time.com/time/nation/printout/0,8816,322588,00.html
Tunisia imprisons an online dissident http://news.zdnet.fr/story/0,,t118-s2118983,00.html
http://www.tunezine.com/ repression of independent media in Kazakhstan http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-kazakh22jul22.stor
y Center for Justice and Accountability http://www.cja.org/ yet another recitation
of the simplistic argument that tech creates freedom (as usual, a world of complexity
and contrary evidence is just ignored) http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/print_version/wo_muller071202.asp
TWO ESSAYS ON LIBERTY AND SECURITY
"Security isn't safe" "They that demand security before liberty, deserve neither
security nor liberty." ----Benjamin Franklin
Please see the two articles below offering different points of view about the
direction our government is quickly moving and the danger it inherently poses
to our citizenry. Certainly, we must protect our country from the danger of
terrorism, but not at the cost of surrendering America's democratic essensce.
For if that were to occur, then the terrorists surely will have won and that
cannot be allowed to happen. We, Veterans of the Armed Forces, who have faithfully
and patriotically served to protect the inalienable rights of our citizenry
and our collective American Republic ask only of our fellow citizens to begin
questioning the policies so quickly embraced and enacted without devoting adequate
time to assessing the impact and consequences they will ultimately have on American
Democracy. Sincerely, Veterans for Peace, Chapter 69 San Francisco, CA http://www.veteransforpeace.org
August 7, 2002
" The First 21st Century Police State" by Anis Shivani The New York
Times wrote recently about Russia getting a new "Western-style" legal code:
"The code enshrines the fundamental concept of presumption of innocence and
gives new responsibilities--and, in theory, independence--to judges, while it
will gradually strip prosecutors of the enormous powers they have wielded over
almost every step of any prosecution, from arrest to trial. Defense lawyers
will have the right to challenge the admissibility of evidence, throwing out,
among other things, evidence collected by wiretaps without a warrant." The Times
writes without a sense of irony. None of these constitutional protections exist
anymore in the U.S. The Times goes on to describe Russia, but unwittingly provides
a perfect description of the new Aschroftian fascist state in America: "...is...a
country where suspects can be detained indefinitely, where arbitrary, politically...motivated
prosecutions are common, where coercion of suspects is rampant, where the police
can stop anyone on the street without any reasonable cause." In Tom Cruise's
new movie, Minority Report, based on Philip K. Dick's story, individuals can
be arrested before they've committed a crime. It's not much different in America
today. Consider, from Matthew Rothschild's Progressive magazine, these few instances
from his McCarthyism Watch. At the Milwaukee airport on April 20, high school
students were detained before going to peace demonstrations in Washington, D.C.
because their names were on a no-fly list. Stephen K. Jones, a graduate student
at the University of Maine at Orono, was fired for developing a lesson plan
on Islam and Islamic civilization as part of his world history course at Old
Town High School. Musical group Alma Melodioso, on their way from Monroe to
Park City, Utah were surrounded by cops, asked harassing questions, and had
their bus subjected to a search by FBI and Secret Service agents, because they
had earlier asked at a gas station if there were any Olympics security checkpoints
along the way. Like several other journalists, Tim McCarthy, prize-winning editor
of the Courier in Littleton, New Hampshire, was fired for questioning the rush
to war. A Palestinian activist has been in detention for six weeks, on minor,
unrelated vehicular charges, after he joined in a demonstration outside the
Israeli embassy in Boston. His teeth were forcibly pulled out while in jail.
Another Palestinian student activist in the Chicago area has suffered a nearly
identical fate. Legislators are considering the formation of a domestic intelligence
agency, like Britain's MI-5. The new Homeland Security agency, which will lead
overt martial rule in the event of a future "attack," is seeking to be exempted
from access to information, conflict of interest rules, and whistle-blower protections.
The military is extending its involvement in all phases of day-to-day "security."
The category of "enemy combatant" is arbitrarily being applied to an American
citizen named Yaser Esam Hamdi who is being held indefinitely in a naval brig
in Virginia to evade constitutional protections. Mr. Hamdi was born in Louisiana
and grew up in Saudi Arabia. He has been denied access to a lawyer, and is being
held indefinitely without a crime being charged. The judge in this case asked
the public defender, "What is unconstitutional about the government detaining
that person and getting from that individual all the intelligence that might
later save American lives?" Similarly, Jose Padilla, the American citizen accused
of being a "dirty bomber" (on flimsy evidence) is being held in a navy brig
in Charleston, S.C. A petition for a writ of habeas corpus, filed on his behalf
in Manhattan and asking a federal judge to return him to New York, is being
fought by the government as interfering with the president's conduct of war.
As constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe argues, members of an enemy force with
which a nation is engaged in armed combat may be held in military confinement
for the duration of war. But the rationale for such imprisonment is narrowly
defined, not, as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld would have it, to find
out what the detainees know. In recent months, there have been some positive
signs as lower courts have sought to deny the government the fascist powers
it seeks. But on its first opinion on the rollback of civil liberties, the Supreme
Court on June 28 blocked a federal judge's order to open immigration hearings
for detainees to the public. The First Amendment, according to the federal judge,
requires immigration hearings to be open. But the Supreme Court has sided with
the government, which has adopted a blanket policy of barring the public and
media from detention and deportation hearings. To justify secret trials, the
government claims that sensitive intelligence information may leak out; however,
adequate provisions are in place to protect sensitive information. Across the
nation, FBI agents are visiting public and university libraries, and checking
up on the reading habits of people. The FBI does not require probable cause
for a search warrant to conduct this type of inquiry under the USA Patriot Act.
Bookstores can also have their records searched by the FBI. On May 29, the FBI
was "reorganized" to give it carte blanche to spy on speech and thought--libraries,
the Internet, religious groups, political meetings, all will be subject to surveillance
in cooperation with the CIA. Last year, federal and state police legally intercepted
2.3 million conversations and pager communications, not including secret surveillance
done under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The FBI, without any court
order, without any evidence of a potential crime, can now monitor chatrooms,
political or religious meetings, and commercial databases that include subscriptions
to publications, travel records, credit profile, and medical records. This takes
us right back to the infamous days of COINTELPRO, the bureau's program in the
1950s, 1960s, and 1970s to spy on radical and dissident groups. COINTELPRO infiltrated
dissident groups to push them through agents provocateurs into unlawful actions,
engaged in disinformation campaigns, and drove civil rights activists toward
burnout and desperation. An unknown number of detainees remain held in secret.
The INS has been reorganized into an arm of the spy state. Visitors from certain
countries will be fingerprinted and made to report their whereabouts with a
registry. Colleges are singling out students on the basis of ethnic identity,
asking them to carry special identity papers. Committees of local vigilantes
are being encouraged around the country as legitimate militias to root out suspicious
people. Much of the fascist agenda is being implemented by back channel means.
This is how the national ID card is being developed. The planned unique identifier
will instantly provide cops with every possible information--credit history,
student loans, welfare payments, drug arrests, minor traffic violations, not
to mention citizenship status. If one is poor, one is by definition criminal
and suspect, subject to harassment and imprisonment. If one so much as raises
one's voice or violates a traffic rule, the result could be jail. Boston's pleasant
Logan airport is being transformed by an Israeli security chief into a nightmare
of surveillance including biometric devices matching employees' identity cards
to their facial features or retinas, closed-circuit cameras that match the faces
of terrorists and criminals, and wireless handheld computers that allow troopers
patrolling terminals to instantly check a vehicle's license plate or the criminal
history, outstanding arrest warrants, or immigration status of anyone they choose.
The real reason for the war on terror is to suppress domestic political dissent
and to fully realize the authoritarian state. Americans must be radically separated
into the privileged minority and the oppressed majority. Nearly a century and
a half after Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus during the civil war,
historians single out this dictatorial act for condemnation. Bush has appropriated
all the civil liberties violations of the past--the Alien and Sedition acts,
the Palmer raids, the Japanese internment, McCarthyism--and added new technological
twists that didn't exist before. American public schools look more and more
like prisons. On June 26 the Supreme Court approved random drug-testing for
high school students participating in any extracurricular activity. Precisely
those participating in extracurricular activities are least likely to be involved
in drugs, as dissenting Justice Ginsberg observed. The idea is to ingrain an
absolute prison and surveillance mentality in all institutions of society. Recently,
Martina Navratilova said in the German weekly Die Ziet: "The most absurd thing
about my escape from injustice [from Czechoslovakia] was that I simply exchanged
one system which oppressed opinion for another." Tom Cruise has said that he
wouldn't raise his kids in the U.S. because "the U.S. is terrifying and it saddens
me." These kinds of denunciations used to be reserved for the nightmares instigated
by Stalin, Hitler, and Mao. The world is scared of the brutal fascist regime
emerging in this land whose ruling elite is deluded of a pax Americana lasting
for the next millennium, as recent articles in Foreign Affairs repeatedly testify.
Holding Jose Padilla and other citizens indefinitely on no charges, and monitoring
citizens' reading habits, is tantamount to creating thought crimes. Liberal
cities like Northampton, Cambridge, Berkeley, and Ann Arbor are defying enforcement
of the Patriot Act. But this only proves the point about two Americas: small
oases of relative freedom for a few (but for how long?) and the surrounding
garrison state for everyone else. Anis Shivani studied economics at Harvard,
and is the author of two novels, The Age of Critics and Memoirs of a Terrorist.
He welcomes comments at: Anis_Shivani_ab92@post.harvard.edu
Article & Essay: A Malignancy On The Republic The domestic political threats
are the real threat to America. By Regis Sabol America, July 4, 2002 -- On this,
the 226th birthday of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the United
States of America faces the dangers of terror from without and, even more frighteningly,
the dangers of corruption and greed from within what the British novelist C.
P. Snow called "The Corridors of Power." Not since Richard Nixon and his henchmen
attempted an executive coup de'tat to subvert the Constitution has the United
States been more threatened. John Dean, counsel to Nixon, described the Watergate
conspiracy as "a cancer on the presidency." Thirty years after a botched second-rate
burglary eventually exposed Nixon, Agnew, Mitchell, Haldeman, Erlichman, Colson,
and company as felons in that enormous conspiracy, we face an even greater danger.
What we have now is a malignancy on the republic. A right wing conspiracy of
enormous proportions involving the executive, legislative, and judicial branches
of government is methodically undermining not only the civil liberties guaranteed
by the Bill of Rights, but also the system of checks and balances established
by the Founding Fathers to ensure that no one political party, no small group
of powerful forces could hijack their great experiment in democratic government.
Yet, that is exactly what is happening in America today. Since taking over the
White House in what the respected journalist Daniel Schorr aptly described as
a judicial coup de'tat, George Bush and his junta are methodically converting
"a nation of, by, and for the people," into a plutocratic, oligarchic, authoritarian
corporate state in which all real wealth and power rests in the hands of the
few at the expense of the many. The Bush administration has junked international
treaties approved by Congress and signed into law, rolled back federal regulations,
also signed into law, that protect the environment and all Americans who have
to live and breathe in that environment, and made a mockery of civil liberties
guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. With the approval of a lap dog Congress, it
has pushed through fiscally irrational tax cuts that amount to nothing less
than welfare handouts to the rich at the expense of most Americans. Perverting
a National Tragedy Worst of all, George Bush and his co-conspirators have taken
obscene advantage of a national tragedy of epic proportions to achieve their
reckless agenda under the banner of patriotism and national unity. We should
never forget that Bush, when speaking at Republican fundraisers, repeatedly
refers to 9/11 as "hitting the trifecta." In horse racing parlance, that means
Bush got lucky. In other words, nearly 3,000 people died to provide a convenient
excuse for why the budget surplus inherited from Bill Clinton went down the
tubes because of Bush's tax cuts. They have used the terrorist attacks of September
11, 2001, to declare endless war on an ephemeral enemy that justifies pushing
through a $45 billion dollar million military budget increase that will do little
to help us win the Bush "War on Terrorism." Will a missile defense shield or
space-based weapons protect us from the kind of attacks that occurred last September?
Of course not. Will more submarines, aircraft carriers, jet fighters, and tanks,
thwart terrorist guerrillas? Of course not. What this budget will do is allow
Secretary of War Donald Rumsfield to pour billions into wars against enemies
that don't exist, fatten the pockets of military contractors whose campaign
donations helped put Bush in power, and satisfy pusillanimous Congressmen whose
own ethics do not go beyond these same fat cats who keep them in office. It
will also suck the United States Treasury dry of funds for any social programs
that may actually strengthen America by improving healthcare for all citizens,
education, Social Security, and other programs that would benefit the many and
not the few. Smoke and Mirrors Patriotism By and large, the American public
does not view 9/11 as terrorist attacks by Muslim extremists against what they
saw as symbols of American economic and military power. Thanks to the Bush propaganda
machine, they have become attacks on liberty and freedom. On July 3, CBS news
anchor John Roberts called 9/11 an "attack on freedom." New York Mayor Michael
Bloomberg, in a sickening display of political opportunism, described the victims
of the World Trade Center attack as heroes in the war to defend freedom. That
would have certainly been a surprise to the luckless thousands buried in the
rubble of that attack. With the notable exception of the valiant firefighters
and police, the other victims thought they were just at work making money for
their families. But that didn't matter to Bloomberg. Indeed, politicians --
Republicans and Democrats alike -- the media, and the public accept that the
United States is in a state of war. Against whom? Can military actions against
violent militants legally and legitimately be considered a state of war? Yet
Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfield have used the "War on Terrorism" to justify our
military adventure in Afghanistan, the purported purpose of which was to capture
Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." We haven't done that, but we are still bombing
Afghan villages and killing civilians. We are also sending advisors to counter
terrorism in the Philippines, Columbia, and anywhere else on the globe we perceive
"evil." A Splendid Little War? The primary locus of Bush's "axis of evil" is,
of course, Iraq. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield, and Bush, Sr., are just itching to
invade Iraq and topple Sadam Hussein. They continue to feed the public a daily
diet of propaganda painting Hussein as the root cause of all terrorism, even
though most evidence indicates that countries the Bush administration is on
speaking terms with are the more likely culprits. (Consider this: most of the
9/11 attackers came from Saudi Arabia, our most important ally in the Middle
East.) Bush Sr., you will recall, likened Hussein to Hitler. The extent to which
Bush has used the mantra of patriotism to achieve a state of permanent war became
obvious when the two most powerful Democrats in Congress, Senate Majority Leader
Tom Daschle and House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt gave their wholehearted
support to Bush's plan for covert actions in Iraq to remove Hussein. (Isn't
the whole idea of a covert action to keep it a secret?) Daschle and Gephardt
pretty much indicated that they would support an actual invasion of Iraq. Just
what are they thinking? Does anyone remember the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution,
the legislative miscue that led to the folly of Vietnam? Do they think this
is going to be "a splendid little war?" Do they think invading Iraq is going
to be like the Gulf War or our little adventure in Afghanistan. Well, it's not.
Any invasion of Iraq will result in casualties on the scale of the wars in Korea
and Vietnam. Ashcroft's Private War For Attorney General John Ashcroft, 9/11
was just what he needed to advance his Bill of Rights-busting, theocratic agenda
for America. Even before a toadying Congress nearly unanimously passed the odious
USA PATRIOT Act, the FBI was picking up anyone from the Middle East they could
find and throwing them in jail without benefit of habeas corpus or any of those
other inconveniences. Thus, we now have the curious paradox of two foreign nationals
facing criminal trials under the American system of justice while two American
citizens remain locked up in military brigs without benefit of counsel for as
long as Ashcroft deems fit. Never mind that Ashcroft has made a mockery of the
Constitutional concept of separation of church and state by declaring Jesus
our only king and holding daily prayer sessions with top staff in his office.
Never mind that he made a mockery of his avowed belief in state's rights by
devoting valuable Justice Department resources to fight California's marijuana
initiative for the seriously ill and Oregon's Right to Die law. Never mind that
he made a mockery of his own promise to Congress not to let personal beliefs
interfere with his duties as attorney general by filing a brief involving the
Second Amendment that overturned 60 years of government policy regarding private
ownership of handguns in a relatively minor Supreme Court case. And never mind
that Ashcroft made a mockery of his post-9/11 claim to being committed to stopping
terrorism after he had already previously turned down a Justice Department request
for $305 million to investigate terrorist activities. A Complicit Congress,
a Constitution-Blind Supreme Court Congress, by its failure to live up to its
constitutional responsibilities, has also fed this malignancy destroying the
fiber of our republic. Led by one-time Republican majority leader and now minority
leader of the Senate Trent Lott and his House cohorts Dennis Hastert and Tom
DeLay, Congress has taken a wrecking ball to the nation's economy, creating
enormous wealth for one percent of Americans and a lingering recession for the
entire country. With the aforementioned PATRIOT Act, it has smashed the Bill
of Rights. It has stymied an election reform act approved by Congress itself.
It has threatened the future of Social Security. And it is on the verge of approving
an outlandish military budget that will bankrupt the country. Even worse, Democrats
in both houses have been accessories before and after the fact of these legislative
felonies. Equally complicit in the destruction of our Constitutional system
of checks and balances is the Supreme Court. Not since the Courts that issued
the infamous Dred Scott decision justifying slavery and the equally infamous
Plesy vs. Ferguson ruling that codified segregation have we had a court do so
much damage to the Constitution. Led by the unholy trio of Chief Justice William
Rehnquist, Clarence Thomas, and Antonin Scalia, along with Justices Kennedy
and O'Connor, this Court has overturned a presidential election and put George
Bush in the White House. It has methodically stripped away civil liberties and
individual protections guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. And, lastly, it has
taken its own wrecking ball to the wall between church and state that the Founding
Fathers had so carefully constructed. With Bush and his cabal in the executive
branch, a sufficient number of Republican (and Democratic) minions in Congress,
and a Supreme Court, the majority of whom, are committed to reshaping America
in their own narrow reactionary image, one can only ask this question: is there
a doctor in the house to cure America of this malignancy before it destroys
our nation? Regis T. Sabol is a contributing editor to Intervention Magazine.
He is also editor of A New Deal: an online magazine of political, social, cultural,
literary, and artistic thought.
OPERATION GREEN QUEST
OGQ's mission is keep N. Americans safe from terrorism by suppressing freedom
of speech and association--destroying the Constitution in order to save it.
See article in Fellowship (July-August 2002). The author, Rabia Harris
(editor of Fellowship) calls it a terrorist organization.
TIPS
Published on Wednesday, July 17, 2002 in the Boston Globe Ashcroft vs. Americans
Editorial OPERATION TIPS
- the Terrorism Information and Prevention System - is a scheme that Joseph
Stalin would have appreciated. Plans for its pilot phase, to start in August,
have Operation TIPS recruiting a million letter carriers, meter readers, cable
technicians, and other workers with access to private homes as informants to
report to the Justice Department any activities they think suspicious. This
is not an updating of George Orwell's ''1984.'' It is not a satire on the paranoid
fantasies of right-wing kooks who see black helicopters swooping across their
big sky. It will be a nationwide program run by Attorney General John Ashcroft's
Justice Department. If it is allowed to start up and gather steam, it will begin
in 10 cities and then expand everywhere, enrolling millions of Americans to
spy on their neighbors. On the Web site of President Bush's new Citizen Corps
program, this assault on the Constitution is described without any hint of irony
as ''a national reporting system that allows these workers, whose routines make
them well-positioned to recognize unusual events, to report suspicious activity.''
After the Berlin Wall came down and communism vanished into the dustbin of history,
Czechs, East Germans, Poles, and Hungarians had to suffer through wrenching
revelations about the reporting systems their totalitarian regimes had instituted.
The Communist Party bosses in those captive nations justified the pervasive
recruitment of citizens to inform on their neighbors as a requirement of security
and a proof of loyalty to the party, the revolution, or the working class. If
Ashcroft wishes to assess the likely effect of the snooping regime he is about
to implement, he could ask postal workers from the old days in Prague to explain
what happens to a society's sense of solidarity when everybody on the block
assumes that the mailman is telling the secret police that Comrade X has been
reading bourgeois books. For a bit of the shock therapy Ashcroft and his fellow
travelers seem to need, they ought to consult some of the citizens in the former
East Germany who discovered, when looking into their Stasi files, that under
the former regime they had been spied upon for years by a husband or wife. Ashcroft's
informant corps is a vile idea not merely because it violates civil liberties
in a narrow legal sense or because it will sabotage genuine efforts to prevent
terrorism by overloading law enforcement officials with irrelevant reports about
Americans who have nothing to do with terrorists. Operation TIPS should be stopped
because it is utterly anti-American. It would give Stalin and the KGB a delayed
triumph in the Cold War - in the name of the Bush administration's war against
terrorism. © Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company
TIPS = ORWELL'S 1984
This Story has been sent to you by : jaquish@uark.edu Dick, I hope you can
open the full article. Pretty scary stuff--they quote a truck driver who thinks
it's just fine to be deputized because they see everything out there, like drugs
and alcohol. So, the terrorism watch extends to any activity, legal or illegal,
that someone finds inappropriate. Barbara
Truck drivers are deputized to watch Pa. roads HARRISBURG - Pennsylvania's first
volunteer "trucking army" was deputized yesterday with orders to protect the
state's infrastructure and report security concerns on the highways. The full
article will be available on the Web for a limited time: http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/3830417.htm
(c) 2001 inquirer and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
VIETNAM WAR
A VICTORY FOR VIETNAM WAR PROTESTERS IN 1971
The Progressive (July 2002), "A Break-in for Peace," by Howard
Zinn is an inspiring account of how the Camden 28 were acquitted of charges
of breaking and entering and destruction of government property because the
jury was allowed to hear a defense based upon the war. In other cases (Baltimore
4, Catonsville 9, Milwaukee 14, and others) the judges limited discussion strictly
to the civil crimes for which they were convicted. The recent anti-nuclear submarine
group Ground Zero in Washington State recently won a case based upon international
law. Supreme Court Justice Brennan called the case "one of the great trials
of the twentieth century," and it suggests one method the peace movement
can use.
NEW FROM SOUTH END PRESS Agents of Repression and The COINTELPRO Papers, Updated
Editions by Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall
Readers anxious about the loss of civil liberties under George W. Bush will
find ground for their fears-and suggestions for activism-in Agents of Repression
and The COINTELPRO Papers. In these new editions, Ward Churchill and Jim Vander
Wall's exposés of the FBI reveal the iron fist hiding beneath the velvet glove
of "compassionate conservatism." The authors examine the agency's treatment
of the left, from the Communist Party in the 1950s to the Central America solidarity
movement in the 1980s. Churchill's new introduction to COINTELPRO examines the
cases of several incarcerated Black Panthers, plus the wars on drugs and terrorism.
Churchill's new introduction to Agents updates the cases of Leonard Peltier
and Anna Mae Aquash. "Harrowing and extensively documented." -Noam Chomsky "A
useful addition to the literature on the FBI's sordid role in American politics."
-The Progressive Ward Churchill is a longtime native rights activist, a leader
of the American Indian Movement, and Coordinator of American Indian Studies
at the University of Colorado. Jim Vander Wall has written extensively on FBI
counterintelligence operations and is an editor of New Studies on the Left.
For more information on Agents, go to http://www.southendpress.org/books/Agents2.shtml
For more information on COINTELPRO, go to http://www.southendpress.org/books/Cointelpro2.shtml
To order desk copies, go to http://www.southendpress.org/order/examform.html
To order review copies, go to http://www.southendpress.org/order/review.shtml
CIA AND RUMSFELD
The Secret Sharers: The CIA, the Bush Gang and the Killing of Frank Olson by
Chris Floyd
There is a thread running through modern American history, a thin red cord that
weaves in and out of the shifting facades of reason and respectability that
mask the brutal machinery of power. At certain rare moments the thread flashes
into sight, emerging from the chaotic jumble of unbearable truth and life-giving
illusion that makes up human reality. It appears, bears witness, then vanishes
again, forgotten behind the next facade. It's a thread that runs from horrified
young intelligence operatives stumbling into the death camps of Nazi Germany
to hardened agents running assassination programs in the jungles of Vietnam
to august men of state building a shadow government with secret decrees authorizing
tyranny, murder, torture and deceit. It's a thread of moral corruption, corruption
by an idea, a temptation, a perversion of reason, the whisper of evil that says:
"The end justifies the means." That thread fetched up briefly again earlier
this month, then was buried, literally, in a Maryland grave. The family of Frank
Olson laid his exhumed remains to rest, closing the book on their half-century
of struggle to find out why he died so violently in the hands of the government
he had served--and whose deepest secrets he had guarded. Frank's son, Eric,
believes he knows the answer now: his father was murdered to keep the thread
from sight, to "protect" the American people from the knowledge that their own
government had taken up and extended Nazi experiments on mind control, psychological
torture and chemical warfare--and that it was conducting these experiments as
the Nazis did, on unwilling subjects, on captives and "expendables," even to
the point of "termination." Frank Olson was a CIA scientist at Fort Detrick,
Maryland, the Army's biological weapons research center. Ostensibly he was a
civilian employee of the Army; his family didn't know his true employer. Olson
worked on methods of spreading anthrax and other toxins; some of his colleagues
were involved in mind control drugs and torture techniques. But his life within
the charmed circle of the American intelligence elite would unravel with dizzying
speed in just a few months in 1953. It began in the summer of that year, when
Olson--increasingly troubled by his own and his colleague's work--made several
trips to Europe, to investigate secret American-British research centers in
Germany. There he found the CIA was testing "truth serums" and other torture
drugs on "expendables," including captured Russian agents. He told a British
colleague that he had witnessed "horrors" there. And it called into starkest
question his own work on biochemical weapons. He came home a changed man, troubled,
morose. He told his wife he wanted to leave government service. But it was too
late: the brutal machinery was already grinding. His British colleague told
his own superiors about Olson's concerns; they in turn informed the CIA that
Olson was now a "security risk." Not long after his return, Olson was given
the LSD. Then he was flown to New York, ostensibly for psychiatric treatment,
at the hands of a CIA doctor--who prescribed whiskey and pills. Then he was
taken to a CIA magician--yes, a magician--who apparently tried to hypnotize
him for interrogation. Finally he checked into a cheap hotel--with a CIA handler,
Robert Lashbrook, in tow. Olson called his wife, told her he was feeling better
and would be home the next day. But that night, he was found dead on the street,
10 floors below. The handler said that Olson had apparently thrown himself through
the closed window in a suicidal fit. The government told the family it was simply
a tragic suicide. They didn't mention the LSD--or the fact that Olson worked
for the CIA. It would take Eric Olson 49 years to piece together as much of
the truth as we are ever likely to know about what happened that night. But
first would come a false dawn, a cruel trick played on the family by cynical
operators in Ford Administration, who used a screen of half-truth and deliberate
falsehood to divert the Olsons--and the nation--from the darkest tangles of
the thread. Two of those operators would would work the thread--play upon it,
thrive on it, hold hard to its damp crimson stain--to rise from the obscurity
of White House functionaries to positions of colossal, world-shaking power:
Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. Keeping the Faith Washington, 1975. It was
a long hot summer of discontent in the White House. The unelected president,
Gerald Ford--who'd taken office after the resignation of Richard Nixon--was
raging. Every day seemed to bring fresh horrors from the Congressional committees
investigating America's intelligence agencies. Assassination plots, terrorist
acts, coups, secret armies, subversion of allied governments, Mafia connections,
torture, press manipulation, domestic surveillance--the revelations were endless,
a bottomless pit of corruption and criminality being dredged up by the House
and Senate panels. Where was their sense of duty, the code of omerta that had
for so long protected those who toil in the shadows, who do the dirty work to
keep America fat and safe and happy? What right did these mere senators and
representatives have to tell the people--the big dumb dazed mobocracy out there--the
truth about what their leaders were doing in their name? They were like children,
they could never understand the higher wisdom that guided the elites. Oh, it
was a far cry from the old days, back on the Warren Commission, when a good
soldier like Jerry Ford knew just what to do: you accepted whatever the agencies
told you, and you steered investigations away from anything that might break
the code and pierce the shadows. So Ford seethed. What the hell is wrong over
there at the CIA, he complained to his chief of staff, Donald Rumsfeld. Why
couldn't Bill Colby, the director, keep a lid on things? Colby had even come
clean about Operation Phoenix, for Christ's sake. More than 20,000 Vietnamese
murdered in the CIA-run program--did Joe Lunchbucket really need to know about
that? What next? Are they going to find about Reinhard Gehlen, too: the Nazi
spy who joined the CIA and recruited thousands of Hitler's best and brightest--including
Klaus Barbie and a cadre of SS veterans--to work for the Agency? Sure, it would
look bad, but come on: Gehlen was championed by Allen Dulles himself--the founding
father of the CIA, the hotshot lawyer who kept Prescott Bush's name out of the
papers when Pres was caught trading with the Nazis in 1942. Dulles and those
Yale boys knew what was best--but try explaining that to some poor schmuck whose
father got killed at Normandy or Auschwitz or some other godforsaken hole, eh?
As it happened, the "Gehlen Organization" stayed secret for another 26 years.
But in July 1975, Ford had still more worries. A top White House aide, Dick
Cheney, sent a memo to Rumsfeld, warning him about an upcoming lawsuit. The
family of Frank Olson had found out--through the Congressional investigations--that
he had been secretly drugged by the CIA not long before he took that fall from
the hotel window. Now they were suing the government for damages. The lawsuit
could be bad business, Cheney told Rumsfeld. "It might be necessary to disclose
highly classified national security information" during the trial. That would
include the truth about Olson: the CIA connection, biochemical weapons, the
mind-control and torture experiments based on Nazi death-camp "research," and
the Agency fingerprints all over Olson's last days in New York City. The case
might even reveal the existence of special "CIA Assassination Manuals," like
the one issued in the year of Olson's death, 1953, stating: "The most efficient
accident, in simple assassinations, is a fall of 75 feet or more onto a hard
surface. Elevator shafts, stairwells, unscreened windows and bridges will serve.
[In some cases], it will usually be necessary to stun or drug the subject before
dropping him." Such revelations had to be avoided at all costs. Rumsfeld and
Cheney urged Ford to make a settlement before the trial started. To avoid the
courts entirely, they would arrange a private bill in Congress to give the family
some cash. The deal would be sweetened by private audiences with both Ford and
Colby, apologizing for the CIA's past "mistakes," and promising "full disclosure"
of all the facts, so the family could at last find peace. And so it was done.
And it was all a lie--beyond the bare fact, already unearthed by Congress, that
Olson had been drugged by the CIA. The family got 17 minutes in the Oval Office
with Ford--who apologized for the government's indirect involvement in Olson's
death--that LSD test gone awry. Rogue elements, you know; unauthorized activity.
Shouldn't have happened; never happen again. This was followed by a meeting
with Colby, who handed over a thick file: the CIA's "complete" investigation
of the Olson affair--so complete that it forgot to mention that Olson was a
CIA official. Or that his colleagues considered him a "security risk." Little
things like that. Thus began the second cover-up. It took Eric Olson another
27 years to piece together the story, from obscure archives, through lucky accidents,
and strained meetings with old CIA hands, who let fall dribs and drabs of the
truth. He was even forced to exhume his father's body: a gruesome process that
revealed the original 1953 post-mortem had also been a lie. That examination
had simply confirmed the cover story: poor sap had flung himself through the
glass and splattered on the sidewalk below. No autopsy needed. Close the coffin--the
body is too busted-up for the family to see--and close the case. But the second
examination, decades later, carried out by forensic experts, revealed the truth.
There were no marks on the well-preserved cadaver consistent with a self-propelled
flight through the window: no cuts on the face or arms. There was, however,
a cranial injury entirely consistent with a blow to the head--delivered before
the fall. Earlier this year, the Cheney-Rumsfeld memos came to light, confirming
that the Olsons had been deliberately lied to in 1975. It helped fill in some
of the remaining pieces of the scattered jigsaw puzzle that was his father's
death--and had become Eric's life. And although the centerpiece of the puzzle--the
fateful moments in that hotel room, before Frank Olson went through the glass--remains
forever absent, the picture was as complete as it would ever be, Eric decided.
And so he buried his father, again, in the dark Maryland earth. But Ford, Rumsfeld
and Cheney had kept the faith back in those dangerous days of 1975. They had
honored omerta. Colby was not so lucky. For his sins--his "weakness" in allowing
a few spears of sunlight into the shadows--he was summarily dismissed a few
months later. He was replaced by a man who also lived by the code, who would
keep the precious Agency--and all its Gehlens, its torturers, its dopers, its
shooters--safe from the mobocracy, the ignorant rabble with their pathetic fairy-tale
notions about democracy, justice, law and honor. He would guard the shadow world
so well that one day the headquarters of the CIA would proudly bear his name:
George Herbert Walker Bush. -- Chris Floyd is a columnist for the Moscow Times
and a regular contributor to CounterPunch. He can be reached at: cfloyd72@hotmail.com
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space PO Box 90083 Gainesville,
FL 32607 (352) 337-9274 http://www.space4peace.org globalnet@mindspring.com
POLICE REPRESSION STARTING, SEPTEMBER 2002
POLICE BRUTALITY IN PORTLAND, ME
From: "Greg Field at Peace Action Maine"
ARRESTS IN SEATTLE
Thursday, September 26, 2002 - 12:00 a.m. Pacific Local Digest Anti-war sit-in
leads to arrests SEATTLE _ Federal police arrested 11 people protesting a potential
war with Iraq yesterday for refusing to the leave the local offices of U.S.
Sens. Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray. The sit-in began about 11 a.m., with
protesters demanding the senators take a public position denouncing a war, said
the Rev. Anne Hall, co-pastor of University Baptist Church. All 11 are members
of a newly formed coalition called Sound Nonviolent Opponents of War. They said
they are representatives of local churches and peace organizations. They were
arrested at 5:30 p.m., when the First Avenue building closed for the day. They
were taken to an outdoor booking facility in South Seattle, where they were
cited for disobeying an officer and released, Hall said. -- -- **************************************
Susan Gordon, Director Alliance for Nuclear Accountability www.ananuclear.org
1914 N 34th, Suite #407, Seattle, WA 98103 ph 206-547-3175 fax 206-547-7158
ANA is a national alliance of organizations working to address issues of nuclear
weapons production and waste clean-up.
ARRESTS IN SAN MATEO COUNTY
Global Exchange, Peace Action of San Mateo County, and Peninsula Peace and Justice
Center combined to organize our largest demonstration yet outside Tom Lantos'
office on Thursday, September 26. We delivered another thousand postcards to
Lantos' staff. As well, 9 of the demonstrators decided to sit in the Congressman's
office until he committed to sign a statement that he opposes a pre-emptive
attack without hard evidence of a clear and present danger to the United States.
The 9 were forcibly removed from the office, and then arrested in the hallway
outside his office. Support from passers-by was absolutely overwhelming. An
increasingly broad spectrum of people are ready to oppose this war vocally.
Hug a GX'er the next time you see one! Alpesh
MANUFACTURED CRISES
I don't know how reliable this info is, but it is interesting. Wanda WWW.INFOWARS.COM
For Immediate Release: October 24, 2002 US GOVERNMENT PLANNED SNIPER ATTACKS
PENTAGON PLANNED TO CARRY OUT SNIPER ATTACKS IN DC AND MIAMI On April 24, 2001
the Baltimore Sun and ABC News reported on a shocking, declassified Pentagon
document, titled Operation Northwoods. In Operation Northwoods the Chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff called for hijacking jet airliners, attacking US
military bases, blowing up US ships and wounding civilians in Miami, Florida
and Washington, DC using paramilitary sniper teams. Page eight of the formerly
Top Secret Pentagon plan stated that "casualty lists in US Newspapers would
cause a helpful wave of national indignation." The opening paragraph in the
Baltimore Sun read "US leaders proposed in '62 a secret plan to commit terrorist
acts against Americans and blame Cuba to create a pretext for invasion." The
Northwoods Document spells out the US Government's plan to frame innocent people
for the shootings and bombings that the US Government was preparing to commit.
Page 9 of the Northwoods Document states that after the Government carried out
shootings and bombings in Washington DC that "the arrest of Cuban agents and
the release of prepared documents substantiating Cuban involvement also would
be helpful in projecting the idea of an irresponsible government." Now in 2002
they're telling us that they think that they have the two men responsible for
the sniper shootings in DC. Can the government be trusted? Forty years after
the Northwoods plan was rejected by John F. Kennedy, we see striking similarities
between the sniper attacks and the terrorist activities called for in the Northwoods
plan. Whereas the Northwoods document planned to create a pretext for war with
Cuba, the sniper attacks are being used as a pretext to put military on the
streets of America and to push for gun control. Now, White House officials are
saying that there's a good chance that al-Qaeda or Iraq are behind the sniper
attacks and are warning the American people to look for similar attacks in other
cities, thus creating a timely pretext justifying military action to capture
Middle Eastern and Central Asian oil supplies in a war with Iraq. On his Nationally
Syndicated Radio Show, Documentary Filmmaker Alex Jones has consulted with many
law enforcement and military experts, including Colonel Craig Roberts (formerly
of US Army Intelligence, a former Marine Corps Sniper and the Best-selling Author
of One Shot One Kill) who stated on-air that this operation could only be State-sponsored
and was clearly the work of a rogue element from the top levels of global intelligence
agencies. On The Alex Jones Show, Roberts said that the MO of the sniper attacks
are indicative of a 2- 3 man team trained in the Special Forces ambush tactics
of reconnaissance, insertion, concealment and successful evasion. According
to Jones' research, the sniper team's attack profile is consistent with US Special
Forces ambush assassination tactics. Best-selling Doubleday Author James Bamford,
who broke the Northwoods Story in His Book, Body of Secrets reported on page
82 that, "the plan, which had been written with the approval of the Chairman
and every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff called for innocent people to
be shot on American Streets." Says Jones, "In Operation Northwoods, we have
a declassified US Government document, approved right up to the President, that
advocates carrying out terrorism against the American people to terrify them
into accepting tyranny. It is now public knowledge that Roosevelt allowed the
Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor as a pretext for war and that the Gulf of Tonkin
attack that launched the Vietnam War was staged by LBJ. This is all now admitted
historical fact, and there is no way to ignore the US government terror plan
contained in the Northwoods document. The plan even lists the cities to be targeted,
and one of them is DC." The national media from day one told us that the sniper
was a lone gunman. Now politicians are telling us that we must give up our liberties
for security, Senator Charles Schumer wants to ban so- called assault rifles
and to institute ballistic fingerprinting on all guns as well as on ammunition,
the new North American Military Command (NORTHCOM) that was activated October
1, 2002 has been provided with a mission on the ground and in the air over America
just weeks after the White House told us that we needed to get rid of Posse
Comitatus (Federal law prohibiting US military forces in search in seizure operations
of US soil) for our "safety." Now the Washington Post is reporting that the
CIA will be directing local FBI field offices in 56 US cities. Vice President
Cheney has pubicly threatened Congress not to investigate the 911-Government
prior knowledge story. He cryptically made the statement on Meet the Press that
Congressional investigations would only cause a larger terrorist attack. "There's
no doubt about it," says Jones "the US Government is the number one suspect
in the sniper attacks." It is absolutely vital that outlets reading this press
release take some time out and go to Alex Jones' website, www.infowars.com.
Jones has an extensive archive containing mainstream media reports proving the
claims of this release. The Northwoods Document can be found on infowars.com's
main page, its government prior knowledge page (http://www.infowars.com/resources.html)
and can be downloaded as an Adobe Acrobat file at this link: http://www.infowars.com/saved%20pages/northwoods.pdf.
It can also be obtained from the US National Security Archives. Alex Jones is
a syndicated radio talk show host, a documentary filmmaker and a recognized
expert on Civil Liberties, Government Black Ops and the Police State. He has
produced eight documentary films, including 911: The Road to Tyranny (free web
download at http://sf.indymedia.org/uploads/the_road_to_tyranny__34kbps_.ram
) and The Masters of Terror, which detail US Government prior knowledge and
involvement in the September 11th attacks. He has also written a new book, titled
911: Descent into Tyranny, exposing the total government takeover of our society
using manufactured crises. Jones has been interviewed on over 500 radio stations,
and has been featured in such publications as The Wall Street Journal and USA
Today. He has appeared on many national programs including, Good Morning America,
CNN, Court TV, 20/20 Downtown, Extra and The Conspiracy Zone with Kevin Nealon.
To schedule an interview with Alex Jones, please call Violet at 512-291-5750
or send an email to media@infowars.com (media only, please). ---
SPYING ON CITIZENS
Register UK Nov. 14, 2002 http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/28107.html
US gov's 'ultimate database' run by a felon By Thomas C Greene in Washington
Posted: 14/11/2002 at 20:22 GMT We all know that truth is stranger than fiction,
and here we have an apparently real item straight from the realm of Tom Clancy.
Imagine a huge, absolutely huge, central database containing both the official
and commercial data of every single citizen, run by the US military ostensibly
for anti-terror and Homeland Security purposes, and all of it under the direction
of a convicted felon. Well the database is in development and coming soon, according
to the New York Times; and the felon who will run it is disgraced Reagan administration
liar, dirty-trickster and cover-uper Admiral John M. Poindexter, who Dubya has
taken out of mothballs to keep us all safe from dreadful evildoers. Poindexter
got caught up in a little Federal crime spree called Iran-Contra a decade ago,
stood trial and was convicted, but managed to escape responsibility on an odd
technicality. As told succinctly by FAS.org, Poindexter was "Indicted March
16, 1988, on seven felony charges. After standing trial on five charges, Poindexter
was found guilty April 7, 1990, on all counts: conspiracy (obstruction of inquiries
and proceedings, false statements, falsification, destruction and removal of
documents); two counts of obstruction of Congress and two counts of false statements.
District Judge Harold H. Greene sentenced Poindexter June 11, 1990, to six months
in prison on each count, to be served concurrently. A three-judge appeals panel
on November 15, 1991, reversed the convictions on the ground that Poindexter's
immunized testimony may have influenced the trial testimony of witnesses. The
Supreme Court on December 7, 1992, declined to review the case. In 1993, the
indictment was dismissed on the motion of Independent Counsel." Now he's in
charge of the newly-invented Information Awareness Office, a part of that mixed
bag of good and bad, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA),
and he's got his eye on basically every scrap of data about every single citizen.
The system Poindy is preparing to unleash on us "will provide intelligence analysts
and law enforcement officials with instant access to information from Internet
mail and calling records to credit card and banking transactions and travel
documents, without a search warrant," the NYT article says. And he's in no way
embarrassed by his role ensuring that the US military and federal law enforcement
and intelligence spooks can quite conveniently spy on the populace. He's said
openly that the US government "needs to 'break down the stovepipes' that separate
commercial and government databases," the article says. Poindexter joins a slew
of Reagan-era retreads and Iran-Contra alumni now operating brazenly in Dubya's
bureaucracy. No doubt he feels quite comfortable among such familiar company,
though I doubt I could say the same for the rest of us.
HOMELAND SECURITY versus GOV'T WORKERS RIGHTS
The First Victims of Homeland Security: 170,000 Workers Stripped of Their Rights
By Harry Kelber Even long before the Homeland Security Department will be operational,
its 170,000 workers from 22 federal agencies will be deprived of their civil
service protections and the benefits that long-established unions have won for
them through collective bargaining. President Bush is determined to wipe out
the rights that federal employees and their unions have enjoyed for decades
under previous administrations, both Republican and Democratic. Neither he nor
his aides have made a convincing case why maintaining worker rights and union
representation would impede Homeland Security’s mission to protect us against
acts of terrorism. Quite the contrary. The very workers whom Bush would deny
their basic rights are the ones whom we depend on for our national safety. Union
members are employed in running our subways, flying our airplanes, staffing
our hospitals, policing our cities, protecting our waterways and coming to our
rescue, as they heroically did on Sept. 11. Does the fact that they are covered
by a collective bargaining contract diminish their patriotism? Does it make
any sense to treat the new department’s 170,000 employees as indentured servants
and incur their lasting resentment, especially in so sensitive an organization
like Homeland Security? Under the new legislation approved by Congress, the
American Federation of Government Employees, an AFL-CIO affiliate, will no longer
be able to represent some 35,000 federal employees who will be merged into Homeland
Security. Here is what AFGE President Bobby Harnage had to say about the security
legislation: “The sad truth is that Senators will not know what they’re creating
when they vote on this bill. This terrible piece of legislation gives the President
the power to strip unionized workers of their ability to represent themselves
on matters as basic as hiring, firing promotions, appraisals, disciplinary actions,
matching pay to job duties — the bread and butter of democratic unionism. Under
this bill, Congress would no longer determine how taxpayer money is distributed
among the agency’s employees — political appointees and managers would.” President
Bush refused to accept a reasonable compromise, threatening to veto the Homeland
Security bill unless he got his way. He also demanded that the legislation be
rushed through a “lame duck” session of Congress, so that the anti-union provisions
would be in effect before the new year. Bush would like to see a ban on unions
extended to other federal agencies and may insist that the war on terrorists
requires it. Indeed, unions that represent workers in companies doing any kind
of defense work may find their activity severely restricted, especially if the
U.S. is at war in Iraq. The White House can claim that its version of the Homeland
Security bill had bipartisan support, since 299 Republicans and 121 Democrats
voted for it in the House. In the Senate, a substantial number of Democrats,
including Majority Leader Tom Daschle, have announced they’ll vote for the bill.
While the President is adamant that Homeland Security must function in a union-free
environment, he has not offered a coherent plan as to how the merger of so many
agencies into one mammoth department will function. Months have passed and the
President has still not named a director. It may take years before these diverse
organizations can be melded together into one integrated department. And it
is not at all clear how this anti-terrorist organization will function, with
the FBI and the CIA each maintaining its own identity and jurisdiction. There
are plenty of skeptics who think that the new department represents nothing
more than shuffling around the bureaucratic furniture. While AFL-CIO President
John Sweeney issued a statement denouncing the anti-union provisions of the
security legislation, the labor federation has made no effort to organize mass
protests against it. Many unions have ignored the issue, regarding it as a problem
for the AFGE alone reminiscent of President Reagan’s breaking of the strike
of 10,000 Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO), which encouraged
employers to fight aggressively against unions. Our national union leaders can
no longer afford to remain silent while President Bush inflicts “collateral
damage” on American workers in the name of the war against terrorism. “LaborTalk”
appears every Wednesday on www.laboreducator.org. Our “Labor and the War” column
is posted every Friday on the same Web site. If you no longer want to receive
our columns, please Reply and type “Unsubscribe” in the subject line.
FILM CENSORSHIP: THE QUIET AMERICAN
'Quiet' in Hollywood short release of Michael Caine film which was shelved
out of "patriotism" http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20021216&s=wiener The
Quiet American, which recently opened for a two-week run in a couple of theaters
in New York and Los Angeles, illustrates just how far Hollywood self-censorship
has gone in the year since 9/11. The film about Americans in colonial Indochina
in 1952 stars Michael Caine in what a dozen critics have called the greatest
role of his lifetime and a likely Academy Award winner for Best Actor. It was
finished before September 11, 2001, and previewed on September 10 to an audience
that reportedly loved it. But after 9/11, distributor Miramax shelved the film;
Harvey Weinstein, Miramax co-chairman, told the New York Times the studio concluded
that "you can't release this film now; it's unpatriotic. America has to be cohesive
and band together. We were worried that nobody had the stomach for a movie about
bad Americans anymore." Miramax released the film in two cities for two weeks
only because Caine mobilized all his considerable clout to argue that the film
could make Miramax a lot of money if he won the award for Best Actor--which
requires a one-week commercial run in LA to qualify for the Academy Awards.
Time film critic Richard Corliss wrote that Caine "is guaranteed a nomination"
for an Oscar, which certainly helped persuade Miramax. In the Best Actor campaign
now under way, Caine protests that neither he nor the film is anti-American.
"I wouldn't make an anti-American movie--I'm one of the most pro-American foreigners
I know," he told interviewers. "I love America and Americans." The director,
Phillip Noyce, is not exactly Michael Moore--he made Patriot Games and Clear
and Present Danger, two Tom Clancy patriotic war movies that earned nearly $400
million worldwide. But The Quiet American follows Graham Greene's novel in exposing
and criticizing the roots of America's war in Vietnam. In particular, one scene
depicts a US-sponsored terrorist car-bombing in central Saigon--which really
happened and which has some implications for the Bush Administration's list
of "state sponsors of terrorism." The parallels between the plot of the film
and plans for war with Iraq today are equally striking. An innocent, energetic
young American (played by Brendan Fraser) is sent to a faraway land of suffering
and political turmoil. He believes in democracy and freedom, and he wants to
help, but he doesn't know much about the place. The quiet American finds people
who seem to be good guys and gives them money and weapons to support their effort
to make their country free. But good intentions lead to bad results, innocent
people are killed, and the United States is drawn into a decade of war. Although
the film was finished more than a year before George Bush began arguing for
unilateral action in Iraq, the arguments have an uncanny similarity. Even more
striking is the parallel between Americans in the film in 1952 criticizing French
weakness in Indochina and Bush officials in Washington today criticizing European
doubts about war with Iraq. "The French aren't going to stop the Communists,"
the quiet American says. "They haven't got the brains, and they haven't got
the guts." Change that to "The UN isn't going to stop Saddam," and you've got
a Rumsfeld press conference about why we should go it alone in Iraq. The film
shows how arguments like that can lead to disaster. But it's only audiences
in Los Angeles and New York who will be given a chance to see the film and make
these connections, and only for the two weeks required for academy consideration.
Miramax apparently is still not convinced that a nationwide release backed up
with a major-movie publicity campaign is a good idea. Director Noyce told the
Times, "The big question is, Are they going to release it properly?" All Miramax
will commit to now is a re-release in January, but only in New York and Los
Angeles--with wider release depending on what happens with the Oscars--not to
mention war in Iraq and anxieties about terrorism. If a major star like Michael
Caine, with a shot at Best Actor, has so much trouble persuading a Hollywood
studio to release a film that criticizes US foreign policy of a half-century
ago, what is happening to other films that somebody might consider unpatriotic
or anti-American? We already know about another completed film now regarded
as a problem: Buffalo Soldiers, an antimilitary satire about the US Army in
Germany in 1989, which one critic said "makes M*A*S*H look like a recruitment
video." That's another one that Miramax acquired before 9/11 and then put on
hold. Miramax told the Times it planned to release the film in March with a
new voiceover by Joaquin Phoenix, but events in Iraq could change those plans.
If Caine does win the Oscar, greed will overcome fear at Miramax, and the film
will get the distribution and promotion it deserves. But The Quiet American
and Buffalo Soldiers were finished before they were shelved. We can only guess
what's happening to film proposals and projects that haven't gone into production,
that raise questions about or poke fun at the military, or foreign policy or
"patriotism." Caine was surprised when his film ran into trouble, but Graham
Greene would have found this story all too familiar. The novelist, who died
in 1991 at age 87, was denied a visa to visit the United States in 1952 because,
although he was a well-known Catholic, the McCarran Act prohibited entry by
any Communist or former Communist, and he had publicly stated that he had been
a member of the Communist Party for a few weeks at Oxford when he was 19. Eventually
Greene was granted a three-month visa to go to Hollywood, where the film based
on his novel The End of the Affair was in production. After arriving, he told
friends he found the city to be living under a McCarthyite "reign of terror."
In an interview with the New York Herald Tribune, he reminded Americans of FDR's
statement, "The only thing to fear is fear itself," and then quoted Thomas Paine:
"We should guard even our enemies against injustice." He was telling Americans
that even Communists deserve justice; he'd probably make the same argument today
about those suspected of "terrorist ties." Miramax and the other powers in Hollywood
should ponder those arguments from the man whose work they are now touting for
an Academy Award. forwarded to you by: Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade (COAT)
(A network of individuals and NGOs across Canada and around the world) Email:
ad207@ncf.ca Web: http://www.ncf.ca/coat
HENTOFF ON BILL OF RIGHTS
A Citizen Shorn of All Rights The case of a solitary American citizen, held
by order of the President in violation of that person's Constitutionally guaranteed
rights, has implications for the future of all Americans. This is an important
case; if Bush is permitted to brush aside the Bill of Rights on his say-so -
or for any other reason - we can say good-bye to our free society. Village Voice
Dec. 27, 2002 http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0301/hentoff.php
A Citizen Shorn of All Rights A Case Vital to Future Americans, Too Nat Hentoff
December 27th, 2002
The government has taken the position that with no meaningful judicial review,
an American citizen alleged to be an enemy combatant could be detained indefinitely
without charges or counsel on the government's say-so. -American Bar Association
Task Force on Treatment of Enemy Combatants, Preliminary Report, August 8, 2002
The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the
same hands . . . may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. -James
Madison, Federalist Papers, 47 Yaser Esam Hamdi's name has become familiar and
troubling to constitutional lawyers, but it has little resonance yet to Americans
at large. However, what happens to him in our system of justice will signal
how far the courts-eventually the Supreme Court-will allow George W. Bush, John
Ashcroft, and Donald Rumsfeld to create what Charles Lane, the Washington Post's
Supreme Court reporter, accurately calls "a parallel legal system in which terrorism
suspects-U.S. citizens and noncitizens alike-may be investigated, jailed, interrogated,
held and punished without legal protections guaranteed by the ordinary system."
If unchecked by the courts-and Congress-Bush's parallel legal system will push
the Constitution aside and realize James Madison's prediction that when all
power is commanded by only one of the three branches of government, those ensnared
in that rogue system are powerless. Yaser Esam Hamdi, born in Louisiana of Saudi
parents, was captured by Northern Alliance forces in Afghanistan. He was transferred
to Camp X-Ray in the Guantánamo Naval Base in Cuba. When his American captors
realized Hamdi is an American citizen, he was taken, in April 2002, to a naval
station brig in Norfolk, Virginia, where he has since been held without any
charges or trial, without access to his public defender, and without being able
to see his family or anyone else. This American citizen, incommunicado and stripped
of his constitutional rights, has been put in this condition by direct order
of the president of the United States. On October 24, the New York-based Center
for Constitutional Rights, Human Rights Watch, and 18 other human rights groups,
plus a coalition of 139 law professors, submitted an amicus brief to the Fourth
Circuit Court of Appeals charging that "the detention of American citizen Yaser
Esam Hamdi is unconstitutional." Reading the brief, keep in mind that the Bush
administration has plans to set up "enemy combatant" detention facilities for
other American citizens (Wall Street Journal, August 8, 2002). In stark language,
the brief goes on to say that "the government's position is that the president
has complete discretion to suspend the application of the Bill of Rights and
the writ of habeas corpus [which requires the government to prove the legality
of a person's imprisonment] to American citizens on American soil, without the
authority of Congress or the courts." The Bush administration has stated this
position in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (Fourth Circuit, July 12, 2002). The government
also maintains that this American citizen, Hamdi, can be held indefinitely.
Accordingly, the Center for Constitutional Rights' amicus brief continues: "We
urge this court to declare, now and for future generations, that American citizens
have a right not to be detained indefinitely, without due process, and that
substantive judicial review is indispensable to the Constitution's guarantee
of these rights." It is not mere rhetoric to point out that the future of the
Constitution for generations to come is at stake. Hamdi has had a court hearing,
although he himself was not allowed to be present. The judge in the Federal
District Court in Norfolk, Virginia, is Robert Doumar, a Reagan appointee, who
is passionate about assuring due process-fairness under the Constitution-to
all who appear before him. In that admirable sense, he is a "strict constructionist."
In open court, this 72-year-old jurist, who insists on ensuring the separation
of powers in the governance of this nation, said: "This case appears to be the
first in American jurisprudence where an American citizen has been held incommunicado
and subjected to an indefinite detention in the continental United States without
charges . . . and without access to a lawyer." A George Bush contribution to
American history! Hamdi, in his windowless room in the floating navy brig, has
yet to meet his lawyer, Frank Dunham Jr. Judge Doumar demanded the government's
explanation of its basis in law for imprisoning Hamdi in that brig. Gregory
G. Garre, an assistant to Solicitor General Theodor Olson-who is a major player
in the Bush administration's rewriting of the Constitution-handed the judge
an official sworn document, only two pages long, by Michael Mobbs, a special
adviser to the undersecretary of defense for policy. In "Meet Mr. Mobbs" (usnews.com,
October 21), Angie Cannon describes Mobbs as "wired into a network of politically
influential conservatives going back to his days as an arms control negotiator
in the Reagan administration." She adds that while a student at Yale, Mobbs
"played in the jazz orchestra." Nonetheless, the spirit of freedom embodied
in the canon of Louis Armstrong and other jazz masters has eluded Mr. Mobbs.
Next week: Judge Doumar's thunderous rejection of the dangerously vague Mobbs
declaration on why the government is fully justified in holding an American
citizen in isolation from his supposedly guaranteed protections in the Constitution.
By the way, December 15 was national Bill of Rights Day, commemorating the date
on which the first 10 amendments to the Constitution were ratified. Unless I
missed them, I didn't see celebratory acknowledgments of that anniversary in
our far-flung, 24-hour media. Anyway, I doubt if the Bill of Rights was much
on George Bush's or Yaser Hamdi's mind that day. Copyright © 2003 Village Voice
Media, Inc., 36 Cooper Square, New York, NY 10003
II. RESISTANCE, REMEDIES
COURTS
COURT RULES AGAINST ASHCROFT'S SECRECY
"Democracies die behind closed doors." -JUDGE DAMON J. KEITH, in a ruling declaring
that the Bush administration acted unlawfully in holding deportation hearings
in secret. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/27/national/27DETA.html?todaysheadlines
NATIONAL ========================= Court Backs Open Deportation Hearings in
Terror Cases A federal appeals court ruled on Monday that the Bush administration
acted unlawfully in holding hundreds of terror-related deportation hearings
in secret. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/27/national/27DETA.html?todaysheadlines
MASSACHUSETTS CITIES OPPOSE USA PATRIOT ACT
(passed after the World Trade Center and Pentagon bombings of Sept. 11, 2001)
Hentoff, Nat. "Grassroots Patriots," The Progressive (July
2002) 17, gives account of Massachusets cities voting for resolutions to defend
the Bill of Rights against the attacks in the misnamed Patriot Act (www.gjf.org/BORDC).
ACLU STARTING NATIONWIDE RESISTANCE
ACLU LAUNCHES MASSIVE EFFORT TO HALT GOVERNMENT ABUSE IN THE NAME OF SECURITY
The American Civil Liberties Union today announced a massive national campaign
aimed at safeguarding the freedoms that Attorney General Ashcroft and the Bush
Administration have targeted since last year's terrorist attacks. The campaign,
titled "Keep America Safe and Free: The ACLU Campaign to Defend the Constitution,"
aims to reverse the Government assaults launched last year by the Bush Administration
against basic liberties guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. Click here to visit
the Safe and Free Campaign site and view our new TV advertisement: http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFreeMain.cfm?MX=548&H=0
Take action now -- click here to participate in the campaign by sending John
Ashcroft a message! http://www.aclu.org/L/www.acluaction.org/aclu/mail/customid122244MAILID695001customid122244MAILID695001.cfm?MX=548&H=0
At a Washington news conference this morning, ACLU Executive Director Anthony
D. Romero and ACLU Washington Director Laura W. Murphy presented an outline
of the Campaign, including: -- A national television advertisement calling on
John Ashcroft to defend the Constitution, rather than re-write it. -- A lobbying
effort aimed at repealing objectionable provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act. --
Updates on a series of lawsuits currently filed in state and federal courts.
-- A coordinated effort by the ACLU and its 53 state affiliates to pass local
and state ordinances prohibiting local law enforcement participation in repressive
Administration initiatives -- such as the Justice Department's plan to deputize
local and state police to enforce immigration laws. -- An action alert urging
Americans to send John Ashcroft a message that government spying and other abuses
in the name of security must stop. -- A new, improved ACLU Web site, including
a special "Safe and Free" mini-site where concerned individuals can learn more,
take action, and alert others about how the rights of ordinary Americans are
under attack. -- "How Free Are We?" an informative and entertaining quiz testing
your knowledge of current threats to your rights and liberties. At the news
conference, Romero said the campaign seeks to achieve "a powerful new balance
between two fundamental values -- liberty and security -- so that America can
be both safe and free." Click here to read the news release about the new campaign:
http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=10941&c=206&MX=548&H=0 Click
here to read Anthony Romero's statement: http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=10939&c=206&MX=548&H=0
Click here to view a statement by Laura Murphy: http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=10938&c=206&MX=548&H=0
Now more than ever, it is necessary to stand up for the Bill of Rights. Please
stand with us by visiting our new website, and take action today. http://www.aclu.org?MX=548&H=0
INFORMATION CONTROL
Open Society? Have you suspected that the "news" you receive is tailored to
present the government's views and policy goals? Have a look at what our government
now openly states is in store for American citizens. There can be no doubt now
that the "news" we receive is to be doctored and narrowed to suit the propoganda
needs of the Government. The notion of an informed citizenry is out the window.
This piece from the LA Times, Nov 24 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.latimes.com/templates/misc/printstory.jsp?slug=la-op-arkin24nov24001455§ion=/news/printedition/suncommentary
DEFENSE STRATEGY The Military's New War of Words By William M. Arkin William
M. Arkin is a military affairs analyst who writes regularly for Opinion. E-mail:
warkin@igc.org. November 24 2002 SOUTH POMFRET, Vt. --
It was California's own Hiram Johnson who said, in a speech on the Senate floor
in 1917, that "the first casualty, when war comes, is truth." What would he
make of the Bush administration? In a policy shift that reaches across all the
armed services, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and his senior aides
are revising missions and creating new agencies to make "information warfare"
a central element of any U.S. war. Some hope it will eventually rank with bombs
and artillery shells as an instrument of destruction. What is disturbing about
Rumsfeld's vision of information warfare is that it has a way of folding together
two kinds of wartime activity involving communications that have traditionally
been separated by a firewall of principle. The first is purely military. It
includes attacks on the radar, communications and other "information systems"
an enemy depends on to guide its war-making capabilities. This category also
includes traditional psychological warfare, such as dropping leaflets or broadcasting
propaganda to enemy troops. The second is not directly military. It is the dissemination
of public information that the American people need in order to understand what
is happening in a war, and to decide what they think about it. This information
is supposed to be true. Increasingly, the administration's new policy -- along
with the steps senior commanders are taking to implement it -- blurs or even
erases the boundaries between factual information and news, on the one hand,
and public relations, propaganda and psychological warfare, on the other. And,
while the policy ostensibly targets foreign enemies, its most likely victim
will be the American electorate. One of Rumsfeld's first steps into this minefield
occurred last year with the creation of the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Influence.
Part of its stated mission was to generate disinformation and propaganda that
would help the United States counter Islamic extremists and pursue the war on
terrorism. The office's nominal target was the foreign media, especially in
the Middle East and Asia. As critics soon pointed out, however, there was no
way -- in an age of instant global communications -- that Washington could propagandize
abroad without that same propaganda spreading to the home front. Faced with
a public outcry, Rumsfeld declared it had all been a big misunderstanding. The
Pentagon would never lie to Americans. The Office of Strategic Influence was
shut down. But the impulse to control public information and bend it to the
service of government objectives did not go away. This fall, Rumsfeld created
a new position of deputy undersecretary for "special plans," a euphemism for
deception operations. The special plans policy czar will sit atop a huge new
infrastructure being created in the name of information warfare. On Oct. 1,
in a little-noticed but major reorganization, U.S. Strategic Command took over
all responsibilities for global information attacks. The Omaha-based successor
to the Strategic Air Command has solely focused up to now on nuclear weapons.
Similarly, the country's most venerable and historic bombing command, the 8th
Air Force, which carried the air war to Germany in World War II, has been directed
to transfer its bomber and fighter aircraft to other commands so that it can
focus exclusively on worldwide information attacks. The Navy, meanwhile, has
consolidated its efforts in a newly formed Naval Network Warfare Command. And
the Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan, or JSCP, prepared by the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, now declares information to be just as important in war as diplomatic,
military or economic factors. The strategic capabilities plan is the central
war-fighting directive for the U.S. military. It establishes what are called
"Informational Flexible Deterrent Options" for global wars, such as the war
on terrorism, and separate plans written for individual theaters of war, such
as Iraq. To a large extent, these documents and the organizational shifts behind
them are focused on such missions as jamming or deceiving enemy radar systems
and disrupting command and control networks. Such activities only carry forward
efforts that have been part of U.S. military tactics for decades or longer.
But a summary of the strategic capabilities plan and a raft of other Pentagon
and armed forces documents made available to The Times make it clear that the
new approach now includes other elements as well: the management of public information,
efforts to control news media sources and manipulation of public opinion. The
plan summary, for instance, talks of "strategic" deception and "influence operations"
as basic tools in future wars. According to another Defense Department directive
on information warfare policy, military leaders should use information "operations"
to "heighten public awareness; promote national and coalition policies, aims,
and objectives ... [and] counter adversary propaganda and disinformation in
the news." Both the Air Force and the Navy now list deception as one of five
missions for information warfare, along with electronic attack, electronic protection,
psychological . attacks and public affairs. A September draft of a new Air Force
policy describes information warfare's goals as "destruction, degradation, denial,
disruption, deceit, and exploitation." These goals are referred to collectively
as "D5E." In order to do a better job of deception, the joint chiefs have issued
a "Joint Policy for Military Deception" that directs the individual services
to work on the task in peacetime as well as wartime. Specifically, it orders
the Air Force to develop better doctrine and techniques for incorporating deception
into war plans. The Air Force, in response, now defines military deception as
action that "misleads adversaries, causing them to act in accordance with" U.S.
objectives. And, like the other services, it is increasingly folding its "public
affairs" apparatus -- that is, the open world of media relations -- into the
information warfare team. "Gaining and maintaining the information initiative
in a conflict can be a powerful weapon to defeat propaganda," the Air Force
said in its January doctrine. That echoes a statement by Navy Rear Adm. John
Cryer III, who worked on information warfare in the Combined Air Operations
Center in Saudi Arabia during the Afghanistan war: "It was our belief ... we
were losing the information war early when we watched Al Jazeera," Cryer said
at an October conference, meaning that the U.S. perspective was inadequately
represented on the Arab world's equivalent of CNN. "We came around, but it took
a lot longer than it should have." Of course there is nothing wrong with making
sure the U.S. point of view gets represented in the news media, both abroad
and at home. Done properly, that is a prescription for more openness and less
unnecessary secrecy. The problem is that Rumsfeld's vision of information warfare
seems to push beyond the notion that American ideas and information should compete
with the enemy's on a level playing field. And Rumsfeld's vision, with its melding
of public information and deception, is taking root in the armed services. The
new Air Force doctrine, for example, declares that the news media can be used
not only to convey "the leadership's concern with [an] issue," but also to avoid
"the media going to other sources [such as an adversary or critic of U.S. policy]
for information." In other words, information warfare now includes controlling
as much as possible what the American public sees and reads. The disinformation
campaign being constructed goes against even the military's own stated mission.
Truthfulness, the Air Force says, is a key to defeating adversaries. Accordingly,
the service branch adds, "U.S. and friendly forces must strive to become the
favored source of information." The potential for mischief is magnified by the
fact that so much of what the U.S. military does these days falls into the category
of covert operations. Americans are now operating out of secret bases in places
like Uzbekistan and the Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq; Special Forces units
are said to be inside western Iraq as well. In the meantime, the armed forces
are making use of facilities in the Arab states along the Persian Gulf. In all
these cases and more, the U.S. and other western news media depend on the military
for information. Since reporters cannot travel into parts of Iraq and other
places in the region without military escort, what they report is generally
what they've been told. And when the information that military officers provide
to the public is part of a process that generates propaganda and places a high
value on deceit, deception and denial, then truth is indeed likely to be high
on the casualty list. That is bad news for the American public. In the end,
it may be even worse news for the Bush administration -- and for a U.S. military
that has spent more than 25 years climbing out of the credibility trap called
Vietnam. If you want other stories on this topic, search the Archives at latimes.com/archives.
For information about reprinting this article, go to www.lats.com/rights. --
DEFENDING AGAINST US GOVERNMENT POLITICAL REPRESSION
Subject: Encountering and Countering Political Repression Encountering and Countering
Political Repression by Chip Berlet Political Research Associates When you're
trying to wash the tear gas out of your eyes with a bottle of spring water,
it's the wrong time to learn about political repression. So reading this section
now has a practical value. Surveillance, infiltration, harassment, media demonization,
disruption, police misconduct, excessive use of force, and other repressive
techniques have been used to stifle dissent in the United States since it was
founded. Repression appears whenever social and political movements threaten
the status quo and challenge the unequal distribution of power and wealth. Every
progressive movement has faced political repression, and every progressive movement
has--and will--sweep it aside. The sooner activists learn the basics...the faster
political repression can be successfully countered. Brian Glick has outlined
the four main repressive techniques used during the FBI's illegal Counterintelligence
Program (COINTELPRO): Infiltration, Psychological Warfare from the Outside,
Harassment Through the Legal System, and Extralegal Force and Violence. [see
http://www.publiceye.org/liberty/War_at_Home/Glick_Overview.html]. After activists
exposed COINTELPRO and it was terminated, many of the surveillance and disruption
activities previously employed by the FBI were shifted into a network of right-wing
"countersubversive" institutions and groups in the private sector. Ross Gelbspan
showed how clandestine right-wing groups coordinated attacks on the movement
against US intervention in Central America while law enforcement and intelligence
agencies looked the other way. At the same time the FBI and other public law
enforcement agencies sought to regain authority for spying on dissent by reframing
it as leading to criminal activity or as a cover for terrorist violence. In
Philadelphia the public and private countersubversion networks worked together.
The search warrant used to justify a police raid on the headquarters for the
protestors planning demonstrations against the Republican Party convention in
the summer of 2000 included false allegations from the Maldon Institute, part
of a right-wing intelligence network dating back to the 1960s. [for more on
Maldon, see: http://www.publiceye.org/liberty/Maldon.htm] Demonstrations Most
activists will face political repression in the streets in the form of police
using excessive force such as kicking and beating demonstrators, indiscriminate
and dangerous use of tear gas, mass arrests, and roughing up those arrested.
Street Law 101 starts with the idea that it is pointless to argue Constitutional
rights with someone about to hit you with a heavy wooden baton. The National
Lawyers Guild has written several guides on the law and exercising your rights
of political protest. Read these guides before taking to the streets. [See:
http://www.publiceye.org/liberty/Security_for_Activists.htm] Arrests Legal repression
can include indiscriminate arrests, bogus charges, high bails, long detention
before arraignment, abuse in jail, and punitive sentencing. Take these factors
seriously in making your plans. Choose you leaders wisely and democratically,
and then defend and protect them. Train others to step forward if leaders are
arrested, and arrange beforehand for legal support for all those who are detained.
Be aware that some people, especially those with family caretaking responsibility
or medical issues, need to avoid arrest. Find ways for them to participate in
your demonstrations with a reduced level of risk. Hand out poems and song sheets
to those who plan to engage in non-violent civil disobedience, and sing in jail
to keep spirits high. What are they going to do? Arrest you? Divide and Conquer
Don't let your critics or establishment figures divide your coalition by targeting
people or groups with unpopular ideas. The following familiar refrain is old
and tired. "If only your group didn't include [ fill in the blank: anarchists,
communists, feminists, gays and lesbians, Vegans, witches, atheists ] you would
be more effective. Baloney. It's a trick. Allow one slice and the blade of division
keeps cutting. Set your group's principles of unity in a democratic fashion,
and then welcome as participants all who abide by those rules. Disruptive Behavior
It really doesn't matter why someone becomes disruptive or acts like a provocateur,
the point is that every group has a right to establish principles of unity that
include acceptable limits on behavior. If your group is devoted to non-violence,
then a person who continuously suggests trashing store windows probably is in
the wrong group. Spend time struggling with them over the principles your group
has established. If they are still unwilling to change their behavior, ask them
to leave. Don't "agent-bait" people who are disruptive or who act suspiciously.
Scurrilous rumors weaken a group's sense of trust and loyalty. Deal with behavior,
not intent--because intent often is not easy to ascertain. Paranoia OK Sometimes
THEY are out to get YOU. Obsessing over the details is pointless. Repression
happens. Take reasonable precautions and move on. [See Common Sense Security:
http://www.publiceye.org/eyes/comsense.html]. Don't let bogus "experts" divert
you from your goals with scary talk about wiretaps and infiltrators. This is
a form of self-aggrandizing disruptive behavior. Clicks, buzzing, and electrical
fluctuations on a phone line are symptoms of either bad phone service or a bug,
and the most experienced and honest experts with thousands of dollars worth
of equipment will tell you they can't really tell the difference unless they
physically find a bug. [For more information, see http://www.publiceye.org/liberty/Whatbugs.html]
Bottom Line The goal of political repression is to stop you from being an effective
activist. By educating yourself and working in a team with others as part of
a larger movement, these schemes to protect power and privilege and preserve
the status quo will be overcome. For more information, visit Security for Activists:
http://www.publiceye.org/liberty/Security_for_Activists.htm "If there is no
struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate
agitation.want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder
and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters..
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will." Frederick
Douglass, 1857 See the full quote in context: http://www.publiceye.org/buildingequality/quotes/frederickdouglass.htm
Chip Berlet, senior analyst at Political Research Associates, spent 20 years
as a political organizer from 1967-1987, working with civil rights, anti-Vietnam
War, labor union, anti-fascist, and other groups. He specialized in demonstration
and rally logistics, media, and security. He has written extensively on political
repression, worked as a paralegal on lawsuits against government intelligence
abuse, and was a co-founder of Police Misconduct and Civil Rights Law Report.
Copyright 2001, Chip Berlet [This message contained attachments]
GI RESISTANCE
Message: 4 Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2002 21:27:03 EST From: daoudc@aol.com Subject:
Re Wilfredo Torres FROM PORTSIDE From: David Cline Re: Pvt. Wilfredo Torres
-- first resister I met Pvt. Wilfredo Torres when he spoke at the Nov. 10 Veterans
Protest Meeting in NYC the day before turning himself in. He spoke to that meeting
and recieved the support of almost two hundred vets gathered there. He said
he went AWOL because he had been promised that he would learn cooking by recruiters
but in training, was told to forget cooking since he was "gonna get a rifle
and get sent into the desert". He went home, disillusioned and depressed, and
was forced to take a serious look at Bush's relentless drive to war that was
constantly blaring out of his television. He then contacted Citizen Soldier,
a GI rights advocacy group, to make a statement against war with Iraq, turn
himself in, and "face the music". As in the past, GI resistance takes many forms
and all of us, especially veterans, should support them where possible. I'm
a disabled Vietnam combat vet and I do. To say, as brother Wojay does, that
someone didn't do it the right way, doesn't make sense to me. I am unfamilar
with a correct way to protest a war. Also I might point out that the oath we
all took actually was to "support and defend the Constitution of the United
States against all enemies, foreign and domestic". Right now the Attorney General
is tearing up the Bill of Rights in a systematic and deliberate way through
legislation like the USA Patriot and Homeland Security acts. David Cline
DEFEND THE BILL OF RIGHTS Message: 6 Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2002 15:16:22 -0600
From: VFP National Office
MASS ARRESTS IN LOS ANGELES
BBC News World Edition Thursday, 19 December, 2002, 11:37 GMT Mass arrests of
Muslims in LA
Families protested against the detention of relatives US immigration officials
in Southern California have detained hundreds of Iranians and other Muslim men
who turned up to register under residence laws brought in as part of the anti-terror
drive. Reports say between 500 and 700 men were arrested in and around Los Angeles
after they complied with an order to register by 16 December. The Immigration
and Naturalization Service (INS) is refusing to say how many people were arrested
but said detainees were being held for suspected visa violations and other offences.
The arrests sparked angry protests in Los Angeles by thousands of Iranian-Americans
waving banners which read "What's next? Concentration camps?" and "Free our
fathers, brothers, husbands and sons". Official radio in Iran also reported
the arrests and the protests, which it said were mounted by families of the
detainees who converged on Los Angeles. Deadline Under the new US immigration
rules, all male immigrants aged 16 and over from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and
Syria had to register with authorities by Monday unless they had been naturalised
as citizens. Immigrants from other mainly Muslim states have been set later
deadlines for registration. Community groups said men had been arrested in Los
Angeles and nearby Orange County as well as San Diego. California is home to
about 600,000 Iranians who have been living in exile since the 1979 Islamic
revolution. One of the Iranian-American demonstrators in Los Angeles, Ali Bozorgmehr,
told the French news agency AFP that his community was being targeted unjustly.
"All Iranians that live in America are hard-working people... They love this
country and all... are against terrorism," he said. 'Shocking' Ramona Ripston,
executive director of the Southern California chapter of the American Civil
Liberties Union, said the arrests were reminiscent of the internment of Japanese-Americans
during World War II. "I think it is shocking what is happening," she said. "We
are getting a lot of telephone calls from people. We are hearing that people
went down wanting to co-operate and then they were detained." Islamic community
leaders said many detainees had been living, working and paying taxes in the
US for up to a decade and had families there. "Terrorists most likely wouldn't
come to the INS to register," said Sabiha Khan of the Southern California chapter
of the Council on American Islamic Relations. She said the detainees were "being
treated as criminals, and that really goes against American ideals of fairness,
and justice and democracy". http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2589317.stm
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space PO Box 90083 Gainesville,
FL 32607 (352) 337-9274 http://www.space4peace.org globalnet@mindspring.com
CENSORSHIP
Old Words on War Stirring a New Dispute at Berkeley January 14, 2003 By DEAN
E. MURPHY BERKELEY, Calif., Jan. 13 -
In her own day, the Russian-born anarchist Emma Goldman roused emotions including
considerable fear with her advocacy of radical causes like organized labor,
atheism, sexual freedom and opposition to military conscription. "Emma Goldman
is a woman of great ability and personal magnetism, and her persuasive powers
are such to make her an exceedingly dangerous woman," Francis Caffey, the United
States attorney in New York, wrote in 1917. Goldman died in 1940, more than
two decades after being deported to Russia with other anarchists in the United
States who opposed World War I. Now her words are the source of deep consternation
once again, this time at the University of California, which has housed Goldman's
papers for the past 23 years. In an unusual showdown over freedom of expression,
university officials have refused to allow a fund-raising appeal for the Emma
Goldman Papers Project to be mailed because it quoted Goldman on the subjects
of suppression of free speech and her opposition to war. The university deemed
the topics too political as the country prepares for possible military action
against Iraq. In one of the quotations, from 1915, Goldman called on people
"not yet overcome by war madness to raise their voice of protest, to call the
attention of the people to the crime and outrage which are about to be perpetrated
on them." In the other, from 1902, she warned that free-speech advocates "shall
soon be obliged to meet in cellars, or in darkened rooms with closed doors,
and speak in whispers lest our next-door neighbors should hear that free-born
citizens dare not speak in the open." Berkeley officials said the quotations
could be construed as a political statement by the university in opposition
to United States policy toward Iraq. Candace S. Falk, the director of the project
and author of the appeal, acknowledged that the excerpts were selected because
of their present-day resonance. But Dr. Falk said they reflected Goldman's views,
not the university's policies. Robert M. Price, the associate vice chancellor
for research, said, "It wasn't from nowhere that these quotes randomly happened
to fall on the page." Dr. Falk "was making a political point, and that is inappropriate
in an official university solicitation," he said. Dr. Price edited the fund-raising
appeal, striking the two quotations. A third quotation - "the most violent element
in society is ignorance" - was not removed. "We didn't think that was political,"
Dr. Price said. About 400 of the altered solicitation letters were mailed late
last month. The university's action has infuriated Dr. Falk and her small staff,
who work out of a cramped former dentist's office a few blocks from campus.
It has also raised concerns among scholars at similar documentary editing projects
about academic freedom and free speech. It was at Berkeley in 1964 that the
free speech movement got its start when the administration tried to limit the
political activities of students. "I feel this is not the way the university
either should or wants to operate," said Robert H. Hirst, general editor of
the Mark Twain Project, another documentary editing project at Berkeley. "We
just got through creating the Free Speech Cafe on campus, and we have a free
speech archive. How many times does this have to happen at Berkeley before they
learn?" Roger Bruns, the acting executive director at the National Historical
Publications and Records Commission, which is part of the National Archives
in Washington, said he had never heard of a university objecting to a documentary
editing project using quotations from its subject. The commission provides financing
for 40 such projects, including some for the Goldman Project. "If it were repeated
a number of times, it would have a chilling effect," Mr. Bruns said. In protest,
Dr. Falk withheld the revised solicitation from most people on the project's
mailing list of 3,000. She then had an alternative mailing printed at her own
expense. "You can't work on the Emma Goldman Papers Project and fold on something
like this," said Dr. Falk, who sent out 60 of the new solicitations last week.
"We just had to find a way to get this out." Since 1980, the project's annual
mailing for donations had included at least one quotation from Goldman, often
with current events in mind, Dr. Falk said. After Sept. 11, the project sent
out a bookmark with a one from 1912: "Out of the chaos, the future emerges in
harmony and beauty." Dr. Falk called the university's editing censorship and
said it violated the spirit of Goldman's work, which emphasized freedom of expression.
During a time when many universities depend heavily on government grants and
contracts, she accused the Berkeley officials of worrying too much about crossing
the Bush administration. "Sadly it is the politics of scarcity and fear, that
instead of opening up they have shut down," Dr. Falk said. "We are a group with
a lot of integrity on a campus that has a lot of financial problems. We are
like the canary in the mine." Robert Cohen, an associate professor at New York
University and a co-editor of a new book about the free speech movement said
the university's action reminded him of the 1950's. At that time, Professor
Cohen said, professors were barred from identifying themselves as employees
when they participated in outside activities deemed political. "This strikes
me as being a sign of the times, that something has changed in the political
climate and people are more tense in the administration," said Professor Cohen,
who worked at the Goldman Project while in graduate school at Berkeley and remains
a consulting editor. Last Wednesday, Dr. Falk hand-delivered a five-page letter
to the office of Chancellor Robert M. Berdahl that detailed her concerns. Dr.
Falk said she received a telephone call from the chancellor on Thursday in which
she said he sympathized with her viewpoint. Though nothing changed as a result
of the conversation, Dr. Falk said the chancellor assured her that "there would
be no retaliation" against the Goldman Project for speaking out against the
university's action. George Strait, an assistant vice chancellor for public
affairs, said that the decision to remove the quotations "did not rise to the
chancellor level," but that Dr. Berdahl was aware of the dispute. "He doesn't
necessarily feel the two quotes make a direct political statement, but he understands
how someone can infer that they do," Mr. Strait said. Mr. Strait said the dispute
was not a free speech issue. "Clearly Ms. Falk had one opinion on the best way
to raise money for the Emma Goldman Papers Project, and the person with direct
responsibility for supervising that project had another," he said. "At best,
what we are talking about here is a difference of opinion between two people
who are valued members of the Berkeley community." Leon F. Litwack, a professor
of history who until recently was the liaison between the administration and
the Goldman Project, said the university's explanations did not ring true. In
purely scholarly terms, Professor Litwack said, the project had the right to
quote any of Goldman's works, so long as the excerpts were not abridged in a
manner that altered the meaning. As such, he said, Goldman's views already appear
in many forms associated with the university - from university publications
to high-school curriculum materials prepared by the project to an Internet site
(http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Goldman/) - but no one has suggested that they
are an endorsement of Goldman's views by the university. "It seems the administration
is mocking freedom of expression by limiting it," Professor Litwack said. "The
First Amendment belongs to no single group or ideology, but that message is
often difficult to implement even at the University of California, Berkeley."
Dr. Price, the associate vice chancellor, said the central issue was not the
content of Goldman's quotations. "We are not saying these quotes should never
appear anywhere in the publications of the Emma Goldman Papers Project, but
that they are not appropriate in the context that Candace Falk put them in,"
he said. "She can disagree with us, but it is not a matter of the First Amendment."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/14/education/14BERK.html?ex=1043676424&ei=1&e
n=5ea0b463398a90db